


Fifteen Shades of Red

by Nenalata



Series: Seeing Red: Tales from the Rory Hawke-Verse [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Baby Hawke, Because we just start right there, Canon Compliant, Don't Worry About It, Dysfunctional Family, Elf-Blooded Hawke (Dragon Age), F/M, Family Angst, Forgot that the story has a few barely-T moments, Got a lot of familial headcanons and interpretations here, Hair-pulling, Hawke Family Dynamics-critical, Hope you liked Act II, I even got rivalry with Varric a couple times this playthrough, I just made everything up, Identity Issues, Implied Isabela/Bethany Hawke - Freeform, Implied Past Anders/Bethany Hawke, Oh yeah there's some hair-pulling kink in there somewhere, One-Sided Anders/Hawke - Freeform, Parent Fenris (Dragon Age), Parent Hawke, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Here Lies the Abyss, Red Hawke, Red!Malcolm Hawke, Rory Hawke, Rory is rivals with too many companions, Self Prompt, Warden Bethany, didn't know that was even POSSIBLE, elf!Malcolm Hawke, ha ha can't believe I forgot to tag those, papa fenris, probably, taking some mild liberties with Tevene as a language, without preamble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-10-19 20:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17608469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: Forgive Rory Hawke--she's better at killing things than making polite conversation. It's one of the things she and Fenris have in common.Fifteen words, selected at random, for fifteen moments in a humble, knife-y, red!Hawke's life.





	1. Always

**Author's Note:**

> I forced myself to do a red!Hawke run, and let me tell you, you all have been missing out. I've never enjoyed a playthrough so much--and I hate choosing mean dialogue options! pls do it. pls make ur own rory.
> 
> I enjoyed it so much that I used a random-word-generator to give me 15 chapter titles, meaning 15 chapters of delicious red!Fenhawke fun for you all to look forward to. Rivalmanceless. Pure friendship & drama.
> 
> Here are the fifteen words, rearranged to suit my purposes:  
> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different
> 
> Enjoy this first chapter! Updates every couple days or so, idk, it's all finished so they'll come fast when I feel like enough time has passed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Always** |Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

Rory Hawke was like qunari gaatlok: explosive, watched by people with ill intentions, and completely foreign to her Fereldan family.

Her old man Malcolm had made this joke to Shepherd Haverloc and his boy Kennan when they came by to stock up on poultices made by the Greenfell apothecary Ser Hawke. The Haverlocs did not know Rory was within earshot. Her father had. And, since her father knew, and since the Haverlocs had come by for poultices anyway, and since Kennan had laughed at Malcolm’s joke, no one could really blame her for charging out of the house and socking Kennan upside the nose.

They did anyway. Rory had been seven, and a child’s muscles didn’t stand up to scolding mothers or sparking fathers. The babies, however, had been kind to her and started crying mid-lecture. Malcolm—as Rory now called him in her memory—had rushed off to soothe them, leaving Rory with her mother, who looked ready to explode, too. Like mother, like daughter.

But she hadn’t. “It’s our job as a family not to call attention to ourselves, love,” she reminded Rory in soft tones. “You know this. We’re under more scrutiny than other families. We don’t need our neighbors to have another reason to complain.”

“Kennan laughed at me,” Rory sulked. “Da said—” what was a word Mother would use? “—impolite things about me, and Kennan laughed. He seems to like Da  _ just  _ fine.”

“And we want to keep it that way,” Mother said more sternly. “Sweetheart. Love, look at me,” she said when Rory kept her head down and scuffing her boot against the floor. “I can’t keep having these talks with you. We must stay careful and quiet because your father is—”

“Cate called him a dirty knife-ear—”

“—a  _ mage _ ,” Mother interrupted with a glare, but she glanced over her shoulder with guilt in the lines of her mouth. Malcolm was still in the next room, a baby being rocked in each glowing arm. Mother sighed. “The Maker sometimes gives us blessings disguised by challenges. We accept them, we do not reject them.”

Even then, to a seven-year-old’s ears, the words sounded like utter  _ bullshit _ . Years later, two decades later, slipping back through the door into her mother’s Free Marches estate after failing to find her best friend who was hurting because of  _ being an elf  _ and  _ hiding from magic  _ and  _ old hurts _ , Rory had always known it was always an excuse, she’d always—

Mother had placed a gentle hand on Rory’s shoulder as Malcolm, Bethany, and Carver came to join them. “One day you’ll understand, darling.”

Rory had always hated being called that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Hands**


	2. Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always| **Hands** |Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

“Darling,” Mother called right outside her door. Rory, slumped over her writing desk, leaned back to call some inquisitive noise. “Your friend...that elven boy is waiting for you downstairs.”

_ That elven boy _ . Rory scrambled out of her chair and raced to where her mother stood in the doorway. “Is he all right?” she asked, not bothering to hide the frantic tone of her voice.

Mother’s brows lifted in that way that grew only politer and subtler the more she mingled with the nobility. “He seems to be,” she answered. “He’s in the hall. Bodahn is on his holiday, you remember, and I received him, so I’m not sure how long—”

Rory stepped around her mother in a way she hoped wasn’t too  _ impolite _ . To her dismay, Mother followed her down the stairs. “I’m spending the evening at Lady de Beauchamp’s autumn banquet. She’ll be sorry you declined the invitation.” The reproach in her voice went ignored as soon as they made it to the front hall. Rory couldn’t hear the cheerful farewell or the door shutting over the rush of blood in her ears.

It wasn’t as if Rory had doubted her mother’s abilities of perception. It was more that she doubted Fenris’s ability to hide his emotional state and body language. But there he was, a slouched frame on a chaise, deep in thought with nary a scowl to his brow. He got to his feet when he saw her.

“I’ve...been thinking about what you said,” he began, but by the time she’d assured herself of his wellbeing, Rory’s frightened concern turned into concerned annoyance.

“You know you vanished, right?” she snapped, and Fenris’s shoulders slumped. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. I thought you’d—”

She bit her tongue, not daring to voice the insecure and insensitive fear that had grown alongside their friendship. But Fenris seemed to hear the unspoken words anyway.

“I needed to be alone,” he admitted. “I thought there was some...part of myself magic hadn’t poisoned. They put this hate in me, and...I thought I could take it out on my own. And I couldn’t.”

Rory motioned to the chaise, and they sat together, not touching, but aware of each other. Always. She had always been  _ aware _ of him. She’d been aware when she first saw him grip a man’s heart in a faded blue hand, of course. But she’d also been aware when they ran into each other at the Hanged Man shortly afterwards, startling each other at the bar, chest bumping chest, the way he’d recoiled from her accidental touch. And she’d been aware when during some random contract he’d bodily shoved her out of the way of a raider standing behind her with a raised mace, biceps tight as he parried with his sword long enough for her to recover and stab the foolish thug.

She’d been very aware, years ago, when she’d shown up at what they now all deemed “Fenris’s Mansion” for a game of cards he’d invited her to, only to find him cheerfully tipsy and oblivious of the reason why she was there at all. She’d been aware they were crossing dangerous territory when he told her about the closest thing he had to compare to a birthday and when she poured him another glass of wine, she made sure their fingers didn’t touch. She’d been  _ so  _ aware of the dark fire in his eyes, the fire growing in her stomach, the idea that with her, it might be different, and they could find out, but another night, perhaps.

And now, knee close to knee, they didn’t touch. But Fenris talked. Hands moving while he told her about his former torturer he’d killed just days before, close to his chest all the same. Rory listened without remembering anything except that he was her friend, whose changing moods and memories dictated the  _ when _ and the  _ where _ , and she kept her own hands to herself.

Without remembering all the times  _ he _ hadn’t. When he’d smirked knowingly at Varric as she argued with Corff defending Fenris’s unpaid tab and he’d pushed her shoulder in a teasing way until she shut up and let the dwarf do the talking.

When she’d yanked a beautiful bracelet her wrist’s size that was  _ far  _ too nice to have ended up in the unconscious thug’s pocket honestly and held it up to admire it in the setting Hightown sun, and he’d snatched it from her fingers and kept breezing past as if he wasn’t a  _ thief _ in his own right.

When she, Sebastian, Isabela, and Fenris had finished depositing said criminal in Aveline’s care, and Fenris had smiled and tugged on her bandolier’s leather strap meaningfully until she let him slip the bracelet in a pocket, fingers pressed to her hipbone for that one instant.

When she’d rushed to his side after the ambush of marauding Tal-Vashoth were slain, including the one that had slammed Fenris into an enormous tree, and his eyes refocused while Anders did his work, and he grinned through a bleeding split lip, smoothing a line of red dirt and blood over her cheekbones and nose in what was probably an affectionate gesture that the concussion ruined.

“But I shouldn’t...burden you with this further,” Fenris said now, already halfway to the door. “I will leave you to your evening.”

But Rory, just as quick, immediately forgot every single rule of  _ touch  _ that she’d ever learned from him and latched onto his shoulder. “It’s not a flaming  _ burden _ and I  _ don’t _ want you to leave to wallow at home,” she snarled.

Most of the words, however, didn’t make it past her mind or lungs.

Fenris spun around the instant he lit up, a belated blue warning. The dark fire from three years ago was back in his eyes, but fathomless and deep. Something haunted. He grabbed her wrist, shoving her against the nearest wall with enough force that Rory gasped.

Her quick inhalation seemed to ground him. The fingers on her wrist slackened as his expression eased, well on its way to horror. The blue glow within his skin dimmed, and he staggered back, staring at the hand that had seized hers.

“Oh, fuck  _ you _ ,” Rory snapped. “I said I didn’t want you to leave. You can touch me however you want as long as it gets you to stay here.” Fenris’s breath hitched, and while that hadn’t quite sounded as she’d meant, Rory made no attempt to take the offer back.

Her heart had managed just enough beats for Rory to feel her face turn red at her own words before a ferocious smile spread across Fenris’s lips. His mouth and hands seized her instead of waiting for another reckless suggestion to cross her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Maniacal**
> 
>  
> 
> we start straddling that line between "T" and "M" and gazing longingly at "E" next chapter, so ready your weapons. it's probably the closest thing to smut you'll get, so get excited, and also don't get _too_ excited.


	3. Maniacal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands| **Maniacal** |Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy a single chapter that is full of sexy, compared to the rest of the fic which is just sprinkled throughout

Ravenous. There was no other word for it.

Fenris kissed her like he was touch-starved. It was true, of course—Rory knew they _both_ knew it. Teasing shoulder-punches and accepting diamondback winnings wouldn’t keep anyone sated, and while he’d allowed others and himself more and more frequent platonic touches…

Maker, but how hungry he felt to her now.

Rory could hardly do more than gasp when he wedged his leg between hers and ravaged her mouth, jaw, neck with his tongue and teeth. She wove her fingers into the hair near his scalp, pulling, trying to gain some semblance of control over what was quickly becoming a frenzied fuck in the hallway.

Fuck. A fuck. They were going to fuck. They were going to fuck, and they were _going_ to fuck, and she and Fenris were going to _fuck_ , and—

Rory’s shaking fingers yanked at his hair harder than she’d intended, and he _moaned_ into the space between her jaw and her ear. And maybe it was because sometimes when she was alone at night and certain no random cockblocking blood mages were around to listen to her thoughts, sometimes she’d wondered what that would sound like…

Maybe it was as simple as wanting to hear him moan because he sounded delicious, personal fantasy or no, that Rory tugged him up by the hair in her fist, pulling hard enough for him to follow, and let him see her smirk.

But Rory was a fool to think she could keep Fenris, of _all_ people, from taking what was offered him if it had been given so freely and honestly.

_You can touch me however you want as long as it gets you to stay here._

“Was this enough for you?” Fenris asked her, voice soft but not calm. He reached up and extracted her hand from his hair without difficulty, holding it gently like he would give it back.

Rory’s bruised lips fell open in shock. “What?” was all she managed to say. Her hand rested in his light grip, utterly forgotten.

“I asked,” Fenris repeated, grinding his leg hard in between her thighs, “if this was enough for you.” A smile Rory could only think of as _evil_ threatened the edges of his lips.

“Enough for _me_?” Rory sneered, annoyed with how stupidly breathless it sounded. “You’re the one who’s been granted free reign. I’m surprised you’ve had your fill, serah.”

Oh, if only the last syllable hadn’t been cut off by a particularly effective grind.

Hopefully Rory sounded just as delicious as Fenris had.

“Hawke,” Fenris whispered, deep and clear. Finally he released her wrist, only so he could push her hips to the wall and press himself to them. Rory was now abundantly aware the thickness hidden by his leggings was no longer, in fact, his leg. “Hawke, choose your words carefully.”

_Oh fuck this wasn’t just a private fantasy they were going to fuck she was going to fuck her best friend she would have traded previous comfiness for smallclothes if she’d known in advance_

And so, instead of saying something equally sultry like she’d always been able to with other lovers, Rory responded by laughing.

It was a manic sound, not quite sane, fueled by anticipation and fear of change, but it helped ease the nervous tension neither of them had realized was there. Fenris laughed, too, sliding his hands around her waist while she pulled his mouth to her lips.

But starving was starving, and Rory had no hope of setting the pace with teasing, drawn out kisses. Her leather hairtie died a violent death with a harsh snap, her red hair that she’d been trying to grow longer catching on Fenris’s fingers. His nails, sunk into the fabric over her hip, were becoming more of a danger to her dress than his mouth was on her sanity.

“If you’re going to fuck me, we could at least get to a bed,” she tried to snap, but it came out more as another laugh.

“Your bed, I’d hope.” Fenris, however, was the one leading her upstairs.

“I know it better—hey!” She pulled, stopping him just on the final steps. “I know it better than you. I’m the one letting you into it. You could at least let me _introduce_ you.”

He released her, and Rory stormed up the rest of the way. “I’ll grant it,” he said when she brushed past him.

“ _Thank_ you—hey,” Rory stopped herself in the doorway, realizing she’d been disarmed again. She whipped around to glare and remind him that she knew what she was doing, but too late, of course, because Fenris had already stalked over with a newer, darker smirk and kicked the door closed behind them both in one movement.

This from a man who would stumble onto a flame-triggering pressure plate if she didn’t bellow “TRAP” at the top of her lungs.

“I asked for a _bed_ ,” she said, dragging him over to it when it seemed like he would push her against yet another wall.

“Granted,” he repeated, following her onto the covers. Rory’s glare turned flintier, but its intensity wavered when Fenris traced an unexpectedly gentle line under her jawbone to her chin. He pressed his thumb there over the tattoo, looking at her thoughtfully. Knees on her bed, Rory slid closer, and his gentle hand scraped from her jaw down her throat to the collar of her dress.

Was this what it was like with someone you knew well? Was this what it could have always been like? Had she been similarly starved?

“I want to touch you,” Fenris murmured. His head was bent, looking at the finger he’d hooked into her collar. Rory blinked.

“I already said you should.”

“No, I…” Fenris swallowed. The finger did not descend further. “I want to—I want to know—Do you want me to? That is, I can—”

“Fenris. Shut up. Listen.” Rory cupped his face between two hands, hasty and careless. “I want you to touch me. I want you to touch me where I’ve always wanted you to touch me, and where _you’ve_ always wanted to touch me, and wherever else comes to mind to _fucking_ touch me.” She was babbling so fast and low that she wasn’t even aware of her words’ effect on him, only her own nervous confession. She didn’t feel his free hand rising to her waist to grip it tightly, or see his expression while she spoke shifting from seductive bravado to terror to a desperate, primal _need_. “I want you to touch—to fuck me like I bet you’ve thought about. Because Fenris, Maker knows I’m not full of shit when I say _I’ve_ thought about you fucking me pretty much every single night in this very bed. I just want you to—Fenris, please, just, _fuck me into my mattress_.”

The sound of fabric shredding was _much_ louder than she’d expected. Rory, on her back, couldn’t keep the slightly insane smile off her face with Fenris looming over her, fumbling for his laces with one hand and tearing her dress as best he could with the other. Rory tried to help undress him, shaking for no discernible reason, and Fenris was just as unsteady untying her breast band through the tatters of her bodice.

Rory had never seen so much of his skin before. Or of the lyrium markings. And later, she wouldn’t remember if she _had_ touched them, or if she had avoided them, or if touching them hadn’t occurred to her at all. Later, all she would remember was touch after touch after touch after touch, but before...before…

“And I had thought your dress indestructi—Hawke. Hawke, were you not...wearing smallclothes?”

Before all that “touching” nonsense, Rory covered her face with her hands and howled with laughter until Fenris joined her, pressing his face against her stomach to muffle the sound. Neither of them would ever really know why, but it was one of the very few things that night which felt like the right thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Lying**


	4. Lying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal| **Lying** |Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

* * *

 

Dawn. 

* * *

 

 

Fenris apologized without explaining anything. Rory struggled to stay calm. Fenris didn’t try to hide the misery in his face. Rory broke down, just a little, and asked him to stay. Fenris apologized again and left. Rory held a clean blanket from the wardrobe to her face and breathed in and out until her lungs functioned normally. Fenris had gone who-knew-where. Rory prepared a bath, for herself, secretly for some reason, and stayed there until the dog woke up and wanted to join her.

* * *

 

Morning.

* * *

 

The slave girl they’d freed from Hadriana had found her way to the estate. Rory hired her on the spot. Bodahn and Sandal, returned from their brief vacation, welcomed her with the same genuine warmth they showed all Rory’s friends. Mother understood, saving Rory a lecture, but she did make an off-handed remark about remarrying because of the way “you and that elven boy look at each other.” Rory knew, then, that her mother had seen him leave but didn’t really know what else had transpired.

Bodahn asked for the week’s market list. Mother wrote one and asked Rory if she needed any more carrots or herbs for the rabbit recipe she’d promised to make for a dinner they were hosting next week. Rory, who had forgotten the promise entirely, invented an amount that she still required. Aveline made the mistake of calling upon the Amell Estate shortly after.

Rory, who had planned on spending the day doing the exact sort of wallowing she’d told Fenris not to do last night, did not greet her warmly. Aveline, again foolishly, asked if something was wrong. Rory demanded why anything should be wrong at all except for Mother forcing her way into the aristocracy using Rory-made rabbit as her battering ram. Aveline dropped it, but then asked Rory for another favor about her beloved and clueless Donnic. Rory agreed to clear the patrol on the Wounded Coast so they could spend time together. Aveline, ever helpful, informed her that Merrill, Sebastian, and Fenris had promised to help, too, and would be ready to go an hour before the patrol.

Rory managed to drag herself into her morning practice routines in the cellar. The training dummy fought worse than usual. Rory decided to give every single blunted practice knife a test. The training dummy was worse at dodging today. Rory strapped herself into her leathers and sharpened her real daggers. The training dummy needed replacing.

* * *

 

Afternoon.

* * *

 

Merrill, Sebastian, and Fenris were chatting on the stairs to the market when Rory showed up. No one seemed surprised to see her. Fenris didn’t look her in the eyes, though. Rory wondered if Aveline had told him whom she was asking for help. Sebastian kept Fenris company while the four of them walked, leaving Merrill to take up the rear with her. Rory, feeling less charitable towards Merrill than usual, offered less than enthusiastic remarks or even grunts when Merrill pointed out the warm-weather birds leaving for winter. Merrill made more valiant attempts to cheer up her most pleasant of unpleasant friends. Rory didn’t need cheering up at all. Merrill bore such indifference civilly enough, but by the time they’d reached the patrol route, her demeanor was chilly.

Sebastian watched Fenris’s back the most while they cleared the way. Rory wondered, unfairly, why he wasn’t keeping his eye just as much on her, since she _and_ Fenris were the ones really up close and personal to the Tal-Vashoth and everything else. Sebastian laughed alongside Merrill while they watched Aveline fumble through her pseudo-date. Rory, for the sake of beloved, stupid Aveline’s cover, did not scream through the valley when Fenris shook his head at the guard captain being a “foolish woman.” Merrill kept Fenris company on the way back, leaving Sebastian with Rory. Rory didn’t want to talk to him, and especially not when Sebastian looked like he wanted to say something. No one spoke much.

Aveline, apparently dead-set on making blunders today, asked Rory how she and Fenris balanced their relationship with their dangerous lives. Rory, to her credit, did not kill her dear friend out of embarrassment, suggesting instead that the two situations were extremely, very, completely, utterly different. Fenris—and Sebastian and Merrill—scattered fast once Donnic showed up, leaving Rory to wait out the new couple’s happy wooing by herself.

Aveline was happy. Rory was happy Aveline was happy. Aveline reminded her she was always there for her. Rory needed a drink and went to go get one.

* * *

 

Evening.

* * *

 

Isabela pounced on her the actual instant the tip of Rory’s boot was inside the Hanged Man’s door. Rory used the boot to kick Isabela only a little. Isabela kicked her back, a little harder, and dragged her over to a spot away from the table Varric and Friends usually occupied. Rory wanted to drink. Isabela would buy her one if Rory told her the juiciest, gushiest bits. Rory was thrown off her balance for once in their unfriendly friendship, because of course Isabela of all people would know, but _how_? Isabela, sensing weakness, asked for just one detail. Rory, susceptible in her pain, agreed to just one. Isabela asked if it was true he wore his manacles under his armor. Rory, repulsed, denied it with horrified vehemence. Isabela cackled, because you know what they say about a man like that. Rory didn’t want to know and left, because clearly Isabela wasn’t going to buy her anything like a normal person would have.

Varric somehow saw her from across the crowded bar and motioned her over. Rory, who had also somehow seen him, joined him, because nothing said “free drink” like “Varric Tethras.” Varric Tethras, however, had no free drinks, only free unwanted advice about her loveless love life. Rory snapped at him that she knew what she was doing, and what she was _doing_ was _nothing_. Varric pretended to believe her and fake-warned her away from the angsty Tevinter porcupine.

The angsty Tevinter porcupine, who also somehow saw both of them but was fortunately well past the point of _inebriated_ , complained that it had been years and certainly Varric knew his name by now. Rory did not even face the temptation of reminding him that _Fenris_ didn’t know his own name, but the thought of its truth did occur to her, and it made her sad, which made her angry, because she hadn’t been offered a drop to drink and she was already feeling _emotions_ without the benefit of intoxication.

Varric asked Fenris if he wanted someone to walk him home safe. Fenris was not drunk, however, and if he were, he had certainly been drunker than this and had been able to handle himself without stooping for help—he’d be _stooping_ because Varric was a _dwarf_! Varric, too, found this absolutely hilarious, and if this was the broody elf  _not_ wasted, then he just had to hear about the times he was. Fenris was on his way home, though, so it would have to be another time. Varric couldn’t believe his luck, because Varric was off to Hightown, too, and could hear Fenris’s stories along the way. Fenris agreed this was a convenient idea.

Rory had extracted herself from this delightful exchange the moment Fenris had staggered towards them, but she did watch him stagger out, towed by Varric. Fenris was clearly doing better than she was. Rory had more coin to get drunk with but fewer people to take care of her on the way home.

* * *

 

Night.

* * *

 

Anders materialized by his old clinic, stopping her on her way to Hightown. Rory almost died of a heart attack and stabbed him, preferably in that order. Anders was glad she’d rather die than kill him, but he’d rather the opposite order so he could heal them both. Rory was tired of seeing friends or even having them at all and wanted to go home. Anders needed her help.

Rory listened. Anders explained. Rory agreed. Anders knew about what had happened between her and Fenris. Rory did not know he knew. Everyone knew and it had been less than a day. No one would admit who told whom, nor would they ever. Rory thought if Anders did know, he wouldn’t have asked for the favor. Anders, tragically for them both, thought highly of her regardless of whom she mistakenly slept with. Rory figured he knew nothing, which meant that nothing could go wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Faithful**


	5. Faithful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying| **Faithful** |Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay listen just because the word isnt in the text it still counts okay listen let me have this

Rory could be strong when others could not. Rory fought when others didn’t know how. Rory spoke her mind when others had to stay silent. Rory took the fall when others teetered on the edge, because Rory had skin and armor thick enough to withstand it. Rory, she reminded herself, was needed whether she wanted to be or not.

First her family had needed her, loathe as they all were to admit it. Rory had protected her home in Lothering by being the loud and angry one, the one the whole town rolled their eyes at or ran away from, and no one gave Malcolm much more thought than they would any other aging knife-ear. Even Mother, in her grudging way, understood that it was Rory who had to take charge when her husband, the king, and the Wardens had died, because Bethany would rather trust Rory’s judgment to act anyway and Carver would want to prove himself. Then her family needed food and shelter, and since Carver _had_ died wanting to prove himself, it was on Rory to provide, and Bethany followed along as ever.

Her friends needed her. They always seemed to need her, except when they didn’t. Which was a relief. Because Rory didn’t like being the one to be in control of _anything_ even when they needed, especially not when _she_ needed.

But after whatever _that_ was in the mage underground…Well, her friends needed her again.

No.

_Anders_ needed her.

Rory waved her hands in the air as soon as his eyes turned bright with more than unshed tears. _Honestly, burning to death in Andraste’s flaming red pyre would never compare to dealing with glowing blue men._ “Anders. Stop for just one moment. I said stop,” she barked when a flicker of blue crackled across his neck. She shook the templar’s papers in his face. “You were right.”

Anders practically snatched it, blue lightning snuffed out, avoided tragedy forgotten. Given how close his nose was pressed to the parchment, Rory was glad she’d dabbed most of the blood off. Probably unsanitary. She unceremoniously shoved some useless clutter to the side of his alchemical workbench and perched herself on the edge.

“Meredith rejected the idea,” he finally breathed. “The _Divine_ rejected the idea.”

“I read it, too.”

The grateful smile he gave her made her heart squeeze tight. “Then it wasn’t a waste. Thank you.” The smile turned into a grin that must have made all the young magelings of Kinloch Hold turn to hot jelly. “I swear I could kiss you right now.”

Well.

_Rory needed something, too_.

“Promises, promises,” she purred, leaning forward like her chest wasn’t protected by layers of leather. “I’m never sure how well you keep them.”

“Hm?” Anders, still caught up in the ghost of his former rakish self, ran fingers through his hair and considered her figure intentionally slowly. “I’m a man of my word, Hawke.” The parchment whispered in the breeze, and he came back to himself with abrupt control. “Hawke, I…”

Rory felt her eyes narrowing. Passion didn’t always mean romance. Or lust. It could mean anger, indignant _fury_ , which is what _this_ was, and Maker help her, but it wasn’t the first time Rory had gotten herself off with rage and it would not be the last if her life continued spiraling this way.

“Well, not man enough, anyway.”

It was cruel, and reckless, and rude, and harmful, and a _lie_ , but all these things and more defined Rory Hawke. And she would not take it back. And she regarded her friend with fiery disdain like a challenge. A challenge before a revolutionary.

Had she won, then, when his hands slammed on his workbench and trapped her?

Who even was her opponent?

“You’re going to crush your letter,” she sneered, but Anders seized her by her jaw and pulled her close to his face.

“I am going to ruin you. Is this really what you want?”

There wasn’t _anything_ left to ruin, of that Rory was sure. But instead, “Giving ourselves too much credit, are we?”

“Shut _up_ , Hawke.”

No one had ever kissed her like this before. Hungry for _her_ , not something else. Desperate for _her_ , not something else.

Frightened for what he might do to _her_ , not for whatever he felt for what she had done to _him_.

She hoped.

“I’m coming to you tonight,” Anders whispered, pulling back from her lips with a reluctance she did not feel. “If you’re not there...I’ll know you took my warnings at last.”

Rory didn’t. She didn’t take his warnings. She didn’t take her own. She ignored her mother, Bodahn, Sandal, Orana, her loyal dog Tetheron. She ate too quick a dinner in the library, took too long a bath in her room, and stood by the fire where Fenris had stood only yesterday morning, brooding in much the same way.

Was this the kind of person she was? Someone who preyed upon her friends’ genuine affection and love for her, sinking her teeth into it and tearing it to shreds and wondering afterwards where her nourishment had gone?

Orana had changed the sheets for her at some point the day Fenris left. Rory had come home from the “templar solution” unpleasantness to find the covers turned as if Orana had always existed in her life. As if nothing had happened.

Rory cursed aloud and dug her fingers into the crooks of her elbows. Anders, if he really was a “man of his word,” and he was, because she’d definitely thrown _that_ gauntlet, was on his way by now. Nothing _had_ happened, as far as Anders was concerned, and nothing nearly as complex would happen with him. A quick fuck, then a friendly hug goodbye. Anders had been a friend like that to others in the past, according to Isabela. This, at least, would be easy.

The door opened. “Ah,” she said to Anders, “you’re here.” And he was, but his smile was kinder and his words softer than the electricity of the morning.

_Well, shit_ , as Varric probably would have put it.

“Justice doesn’t approve of my obsession with you. He thinks you’re a distraction to me. It’s one of the few things on which we agree.”

Rory cackled a little, because of course, _well, shit_ , of course this couldn’t be simple. “Is he the unwilling participant of our threesome?”

“Please don’t call it that.” Her laugh and his answering frown stilled the air between them. Anders searched for words in the meanwhile. The fact that he felt the need to at all bode poorly, as if the bidding had not borne poorly in the first place.

Even though Rory had decided this was an arrangement, a transaction, she didn’t expect the process to feel so _uncomfortable_. Probably because it was, apparently, an “obsession.”

“I’m surprised you wanted me here at all,” he confessed, having decided upon what he thought were wise words. “I thought, you know, what with you and Fenris—”

“Does everyone in _fucking_ Thedas know?” Rory shouted, wrenching her fingers from her folded arms. Anders recoiled, her voice echoing in her bedroom walls.

_Great_.

“It hasn’t exactly been a secret,” he defended himself. “What with the way you’ve been _flirting_ for years—”

“ _It was yesterday_!”

Well.

At least she hadn’t screamed this time. Barely.

Anders’s face had gone so white it was a surprise she couldn’t see where Justice dwelled beneath his skin. “I see. I see now. I see what this is. That’s why this is happening. That’s why it’s _now_. Because _you_ couldn’t tame the feral dog—”

“Don’t you fucking talk about him that way,” Rory said, voice low and threatening. “You of _all_ people don’t get to talk about him that way.”

“Me? _Me_? Of all—”

“You’re not here because you want me, either,” Rory scoffed, the words hitting hard in her own chest. No. No, that kiss. No, it hadn’t been meant for her, she was disgusting and needy for thinking it was— “You’re only here because Bethany isn’t, because I remind you of her—”

“Believe me. You’re not like your sister at all.”

No one had ever said that as a compliment before. It still wasn’t now.

“Well,” Rory said through the red haze of fury, “I’m just as unlikely to sleep with you.”

“I see that now.” But the fight had all gone out of him. Because Anders was her friend, who didn’t really want to hurt her, and she was right, and he knew that she was right. And because Rory was his friend, who didn’t really want to hurt him, and because what he hadn’t quite said she knew was true, too. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Probably not.”

“‘Probably,’” Anders quoted with a snort, and the tension eased, just a fraction. But his parting shot as he turned his back was, “Speaking as your friend, I hope your trust in the beast isn’t wasted when he turns on you.”

The only reason Rory didn’t throw something at him was because her dog bounded through the open door and demanded petting, and also because of that same dim reminder in her brain that Anders said he was still her friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Education**


	6. Education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful| **Education** |Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

“It’s...a book.”

Rory waited for Fenris to take it. Which he did not. She would have thought him uncomfortable with the risk of touching her, because they were _that_ far back to square zero, but he didn’t look at her hands. Just the book. With a befuddlement she had never seen in him before.

Just in case it was indeed a touch thing, she set the (admittedly rather thick and heavy) book down on his table. “And here I thought your senses of perception were useless. Glad it kicks in when we’re well away from bear traps.” Fenris didn’t laugh, only keeping his eyes trained on the book.

Rory felt her hands growing damp with nerves. It had taken only a few weeks—only, well, six and a half—for them to act like regular people around each other again. No more flirting, no more relaxed postures, no more hard bare-footed kicks to the shin under the card table when she was being too much of an asshole to Isabela.

What was his deal with Isabela, anyway? Why did he think her “honor” was worth defending? Did Fenris think Rory was hurting her little feelings? Had Isabela offered Fenris any... _feelings_?

(It was probably because Rory only complained about Isabela’s cheating when _she_ lost. Equality and all.)

Mother, who had most certainly seen two of Rory’s handsome male friends sulk out of her bedroom in the span of two days, hadn’t made any effort to teach her daughter social skills past “please” and “thank you” because anything further had been impossible. So it had fallen on Aveline to be a mother to the both—well, three, counting Anders—of them. And Aveline had not been at all happy about it. Fenris, Anders, and Rory were often sent on far-flung, painfully tedious guard errands across the city that required civility, combat teamwork, or both.

It had been a long six and a half weeks.

But now things were normal enough that it was okay for Rory to swing by Fenris’s place to give him the book she’d found abandoned in the Alienage. Supposedly.

“It’s a book about Shartan, the elf who rebelled with Andraste,” Rory told him now. Fenris was so much more well-versed in every faith’s religious history that adding the vague clarifier was embarrassing. _Well, Malcolm had at least_ tried _to give them all an education_. “I thought you’d be interested, but I guess not. I’ve never seen you at a loss for words before.”

Fenris barked a humorless laugh that surprised them both. “You’re...not incorrect. Slaves are not...permitted to read.”

Rory blinked while Fenris struggled to meet her baffled gaze. “You can’t read?” she asked, like an idiot.

“No.”

“Do you want to?” The answer seemed obvious to her, and not only because she couldn’t imagine a world where tavern names required no notice save her memories of which ones she’d vomited in. If Fenris had learned so much history and learned so many languages by immersion alone, what else could he learn through letters?

But Fenris fidgeted. “I never considered it. I never—”

“Can I teach you?” Andraste preserve her, as Mother liked to say, but Rory was more impulsive than usual today. _Carver would be impressed enough to hit her_. “I taught the twins. I mean,” she retreated, verbally and physically away from the table, “I won’t force you to make a decision this moment. Think it over—”

“I would like that very much.”

Rory raised her brows to keep herself from exhaling a relieved sigh. “Like it? I bet we could eventually have you enjoy it,” she said, and any remaining flicker of shame faded from his expression.

Once the initial awkwardness and clunky process of “scheduling lessons” had worked itself out, Rory’s hypothesis proved correct. Even she had fun, although she admitted it was less frustrating for her than Fenris when he couldn’t remember what sound the letter on the flashcard she held up made.

When they deemed him ready to read letters in context, one word at a time, Fenris’s frustration only increased. When her rebukes of “The more wine you drink, the harder this will get, Fenris” proved ineffective, she switched to reminding him “Bodahn likes the same vintage as you, did you know that? And you don’t know where in the cellar he stores his own supply if you wanted to go get another bottle.”

Casual, “I saw it and remembered my second-favorite dwarf preferred it” gifts to Bodahn’s greetings became frequent enough after that Bodahn had taken to joining them for the lessons. The best part of Fenris’s unacknowledged apology to them both was Bodahn, a placid presence amidst their flaring personalities, chiming in on occasion when Rory and Fenris both floundered for words and setting the ship sailing once more down the new river of reading words in sentences.

“My boy Sandal never had the aptitude for those squiggly little lines, eh, son?” Bodahn asked his son, patting his arm vigorously. Fenris and Rory listened, drinking the evening’s wine from glasses instead of the bottle so Mother didn’t accuse them of _impropriety_ or _barbarism_ or whatever else she could say condescendingly. “Eyes better off for enchanting, that was clear enough!” Sandal gave him a bland smile, and Bodahn beamed back before turning towards Fenris. “Serah elf, if you’ll pardon my saying, I’d bet my favorite shirt you’d be a poor runesmith, because you picked up on those squiggles faster than my boy learned his craft. Almost,” he added with another fond pat to Sandal’s arm.

“You’re much too generous,” Fenris replied with a dismissive shake of the head, but Rory heard the pleased embarrassment in his voice.

She had to admit, however, it was a little odd seeing him silently mouth the words of the detailed racist graffiti in Darktown and nod gravely when he understood it. But Fenris clearly didn’t know she was watching, and surreal as it was, Rory wouldn’t dream of taking those proud, private moments from him.

His real moment of triumph came even quieter, and it didn’t arrive as Rory expected. She’d thought Fenris pleased when he took the note from the templar Moira and offered to read its clearly forged contents, which correctly turned out to spell the death sentence for foolish, kindly old Emeric. She’d held her breath when he made his way through the first paragraph of _A Slave’s Life_ , and while he stared at the last sentence for a long time— “But she was betrayed, and so were we”—he merely wet his mouth with a gulp of water and continued on.

No, it was an ordinary moment.

“Your true name is Coralie?” he asked the second Gamlen’s door clicked behind them. Rory glared at the cold sky as if it were at fault for the whole ordeal.

“Maker, don’t remind me. This is why none of you get to visit my uncle. And it’s not my _true_ name.”

“I apologize,” he said, sounding genuine. Rory, stubborn as ever, refused to acknowledge the apology. Fenris had snapped at her to stop hounding him to wear “furs or something, I don’t even care if they’re not proper shoes, it’s fucking winter” over his sensitive northern-climate feet, so he had earned a little snubbing.

_Maybe he should stop complaining about the snow, then_.

“You and Aveline...you dislike your names,” Fenris barreled on, as if the conversation topic were actually worth continuing. “Are you bitter about your parents’ choice?”

“We’re allowed to be.”

“Of course you are,” he said, aghast. He stopped dead in the snowy street, looking like he wanted to sink into it. “Your lives are your own, not—I’ve overstepped again.”

Rory’s irritation melted at once. She’d dragged Fenris to Gamlen’s on their way to pick up Varric for lunch with Sebastian because she’d remembered he owed her coin. It wasn’t Fenris’s fault Gamlen had called her the name Mother had written in her letters for twenty or so years, the name he’d never unlearned. Rory hadn’t prepared him for the feelings that evoked, much less prepared _herself_.

“I’m being an ass,” Rory Hawke admitted in a glorious moment of self-awareness that would have made Malcolm laugh himself onto the floor. “No one’s names define them. You’re right. The names others give us are ours to reclaim or reject.”

Other pedestrians buffeted them to the side, leaving the two of them to acknowledge the others’ emotions in respectful silence.

“Fenris,” Rory said quietly, but loud enough to get his attention. He quirked a brow. “Do you know how to spell it? How you’d like to? Spell ‘Fenris,’ I mean.”

Fenris’s eyes widened enough she could see the green sparkling in the midday sun. His lips parted in surprise—the answer was clearly in the negative. Rory fished around in her bandolier and pulled out a black stick of eye makeup. She glared at him, daring him to comment, but he didn’t, only took it in uncertain fingers and stared at the patch of snow on a barrel.

His handwriting started off wobbly, slow as always. But after a long moment of pausing after the ‘n,’ the shakiness was more determined. He added an ‘i.’ F-E-N-R-I-S.

Rory waited, waited for some exhilarating flourish of victory to overcome him. But Fenris just stared at his own name, tracing a finger under the blackish snow to underline it.

“Hawke. How do you spell your name?”

Rory groaned, ruining the mood of grandness. “Not _this_ again—”

“No, how do you spell ‘Hawke?’”

Fenris’s expression was serious, no challenge in it. It was hard to believe this hesitant, somber-eyed, slight of frame elf, who had laughed when his sword cleaved through a blood mage’s spine mid-ritual, who had once drunkenly enraged Merrill to the point that she’d slammed his head into the wall with a spell but had continued slicing through her emotional defenses up until even Varric hit him, who had laved a warm unapologetic tongue over a nipple she’d complained had chafed against her sheets when he’d fucked her into her mattress as requested— _shut up_ —were all the same man.

The moment came when Rory finished writing her name under his, and Fenris underlined H-A-W-K-E, too.

“I had not known it was spelled with an ‘e,’” Fenris said, the smile he gave her so full of freedom that she couldn’t do anything but nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Grieving**


	7. Grieving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education| **Grieving** |Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha ha oh no the word "grieving" appeared in the randomized-word chapter title list oh goodness however will i use that word in a canon setting no one would guess oh my if only there were an appropriate quest people know

“I...do not know what to say. But I am here.”

Rory didn’t acknowledge Fenris when he came in. He stood in her doorway for a long moment, clearly unsure if his presence was unwelcome. When no shout or sob or snap or scream warned him away, he joined her on the edge of her bed. Tetheron, loyal hound as he was, sniffed at Fenris’s foot from his position curled around Rory’s ankle, deemed him no threat to his silent mistress, and huffed back in place. Fenris waited.

“My father was an elf,” Rory said.

Some dim part of her mind congratulated Fenris on replying so evenly. “I did not know.”

“No reason why you would. Though perhaps you might have. Am I not shorter than you?” Bethany was even shorter. Maker’s aching balls, did _Gamlen_ really say he’d write her? Bethany would be even more heartbroken not to have heard the news from her sister. Rory pinched the bridge of her nose and leaned into her hand.

Tetheron whoofed again.

“Your personality takes up whole fortresses, Hawke. Your height is the last thing I’ve noticed.” She heard the grin in Fenris’s voice, heard the unpleasantly respectful acquiescence to what he thought a distracting topic. But she consoled herself with the knowledge that she could _feel_ him comparing heights now, eying the way her ears went narrower the closer they went to their not-quite-rounded tips. Fenris was just like anyone else in that, at least.

“Well, Mother noticed and cared,” she snorted, sitting up straight now. “She was awfully disappointed I had my father’s hot temper but none of those _delicate Amell features_. Just a weird elven nose in a plain human face.”

Rory swallowed, the sound loud enough in her ears to block out Fenris’s quick intake of breath. “ _Hawkes,”_ Malcolm had said when she’d left Ser Poppet the Brave behind, “ _do not cry when their lives aren’t what they’d thought them to be. And you look enough like a Hawke to me that I’m not having you cry, Coralie._ ” Mother had dragged her to keep running once Malcolm’s silencing spell had done its work on her vocal chords, and the three of them left her brave doll Ser Poppet in their burning hut to face the templars alone.

Malcolm hadn’t wanted her; he’d wanted Mother. And Mother hadn’t wanted either of them, just their ideas, their _symbolism_ of “love despite the odds.” Sometimes if Malcolm was tired of arguing with Mother—a more common thing closer to the end—but didn’t know how to disengage peacefully, he’d call her out on it, of “lust to spite the in-laws.” Bethany and Carver looked Amellishly _human_ enough that their grandparents might have respected Mother’s marriage as “having turned out all right in the end.”

Rory the Firstborn Accident did not.

Fenris crossed his ankles next to her, and the sudden, quiet movement realerted her to his presence. He didn’t say anything. With the same abruptness, she remembered one of Fenris and Merrill’s worst early fights.

“You _had a life._ You _had a family. And you threw it all away._ ”

Fenris wouldn’t say something like that to Rory. He probably wasn’t even thinking it in this moment. But the same vitriolic accusation played in her mind all the same, with Leandra Amell’s voice, with Leandra Amell’s patchwork undead face saying it with a smile.

“Well,” Rory sighed, scritching the dog behind his ears, “what’s new with you?”

“You’re not alone, Hawke.”

“Hm?” Tetheron’s tail banged hard on the rug with joy.

“You still have family.”

_Well._

_Apparently he_ would _say that to her._

And Rory knew it wasn’t fair of her to feel outraged, to expect unending support from her best friend whose sensitivities to this topic they both knew. But _fair_ didn’t matter when her mother had been _dissected_ and _abused_ by the most deranged and vile of blood magic because of a woman she was not but _looked like_. And as much or as little affection there was between Rory Hawke and Leandra Amell, Rory was her daughter, and Rory hadn’t wanted her mother to die.

And no one’s child should have to have to hold pieces of their parent’s corpse together to the sound of a lie: _I’m proud of you, darling. So very proud._

“I think I’ve had enough family for one lifetime,” she muttered, controlling her voice in case it threatened to crack. Her fingers dug into Tetheron’s thick coat.

“I meant us.” Rory nearly yanked fur out of her dog’s back in surprise. Fenris looked embarrassed when she whipped her head around to stare at him, but the longer she stared, the more guilt infiltrated the expression until he couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “We’re—you have us. Not just Bethany and your hound,” he said approvingly to Tethreron, who had decided enough was enough and was trotting out. “Bodahn, Aveline, Varric, Sebastian. Isabela, even. The...rest.”

_If he wasn’t going to explicitly mention himself, Fenris was about to be the first person in Kirkwall to see her cry._

“You’ll always have us,” Fenris said. He kept flicking his gaze around the room. It was exhausting to watch his indecision, so she didn’t. Rory fell back on her bed with a sigh that sounded very much like the beginning of a sob. That sigh nearly muffled his next words, spoken soft like a fervent prayer: “You’ll always have me.”

Rory stared at the canopy, feeling the words in her ears, in her chest, hammering around in her head, hoping but knowing it was true. “Oh, I know,” she whispered at last, hoping and knowing the same.

He reached back, and for a moment, Rory thought—nothing, she thought nothing, Fenris gave her hand the lightest brush of the tips of his fingers. The first real touch since the last touch on this bed.

“Do you want us to call you something else?” Fenris asked. She made an uncomprehending noise. “Your name. Not your mother’s name for you, not your father’s family name.”

Rory thought about it for an instant too long before she sat up and shook her head. “Coralie, Carver, and Malcolm Hawke are dead, and Bethany’s a Warden,” she said. “Seems like someone may as well be a Hawke.”

Fenris offered her a wry grin. “I see no one else wishing to be associated with the name,” he teased.

“Other than all of you,” she snorted, raising her other fist in a punch that he could bat away like a fly if he wanted. His grin widened, but his eyes were serious.

“You can make the name your own now, Hawke,” Fenris told her with a gentleness that made her uncomfortable. “There’s no longer anything holding Rory back.”

“That’s ‘Serah Hawke’ to you,” she said tartly, but only to keep the lump in her throat from tightening.

There wasn’t anyone around anymore who’d known her as Rory. She didn’t think she’d have to grieve for herself, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Compete**


	8. Compete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving| **Compete** |Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were following before, you may have noticed I've added a reminder of our words to each chapter! The notes at the end will now remind you again of the upcoming chapter's word. Hope that helps keep you both informed and on your toes.

“It’s been two days. Go home, Fenris.”

“Healing is a long process. As I thought you knew well, _mage_.”

“Well, she’s not going to get better any faster with her two dogs moping outside her door.”

“I’m warning you—”

“At least I’m useful. Weren’t you the one to _tell_ that ox-man to fight her?”

“You know nothing. You were not even there.”

“Well, I’m here now. Helping. Not sulking. I can’t imagine what Hawke sees in you.”

Tense silence broken only by the dog’s loud yawn.

“It is done. Leave it be.”

“Well, good. I always knew she had some sense.”

“Do _not_ make light of this. Leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Yet _here_ you—”

“Oh, will you two get over yourselves? You’re like two dogs around a bitch in heat.”

“Isabela! Maker’s breath, where did you—”

“Why are you here?”

“Oh, you know. I figured I’d loot the place while Hawke’s too sliced up to stop me.”

Hesitant pause.

“I’m kidding, you idiots. I’m here to drop something off. Where’s Bodahn?”

“I sent him out for more spindleweed. It helps cauterize—”

“Fascinating! Well, I’ll just have you tell her for me. Save some parchment and all. So, Fenris—”

“Tell me instead, Isabela. I see her more frequently, after all.”

“Yes, while she’s _unconscious_ —”

“Blooming Rose will let you untwist your panties any hour you want. You’re both in the room, aren’t you? Good, shut up. Just tell her I’m leaving.”

“Oh? Where to?”

“Nowhere. I’m just leaving. That’s all. I don’t know. I’ll be at the docks keeping an eye out for a stiff masthead if you want to join me, Fenris.”

“I’ll pass. Safe travels, Isabela.”

Doors opening downstairs muffle the window sliding closed upstairs.

“Why can’t she use a door like a normal person? And why the dramatics? She can’t be serious.”

“It’s temporary. She’ll be back soon enough.”

“I’m sure your master says the same of you.”

Barking and a new arrival interrupt the erupting violence.

“If it isn’t my favorite Blondie, broody, and beastie! Hello to you too, you big-ass monster.”

Pleased dog whines and pants.

“If you two try to kill each other, you know Hawke will murder the survivor, right?”

Curses in several languages accompany a pair of barefooted footsteps down the stairs.

“Can you believe him? Fucker practically invites the Arishok to eviscerate her, then has the audacity to drape himself over her furniture sulking about it—”

“Brooding is what the broody elf does best, Blondie—”

“—while _I_ have to make sure that flaming qunari doesn’t finish the job from beyond the Veil! If I so much as _touch_ her hair wrong, her whole neck jerks and nearly undoes everything.”

“Shit. Is it that bad?”

“Well, it would have been a lot worse if you hadn’t sent that runner to get me. Thank you. To find someone willing to find me through all that chaos...”

“Friends are worth that kind of coin and more. But it wasn’t all mine. All those nobles owe ‘The Champion’ their lives.”

“I’m sure they’ll forget that gratitude quick enough.”

Anguished, almost inhuman screams.

“She’s awake. I have to go.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Three doors closing, many hurried footsteps, voices intermingling, dog barks.

“Andraste guide me—”

“Varric, she sounds so much worse—”

“Dwarf, I heard—”

“Creators, oh, Hawke—”

“Blondie is—listen—listen, Blondie’s in there right now, and he didn’t seem too concerned. I guess it’s just a day in the life right now.”

A flurry of quiet exhales of varying emotion.

“Does Anders need anything?”

“Her steward Bodahn is already out on errands for the—mage.”

“Well, I’ve increased patrols everywhere, but I can give the estate more privacy.”

“Blondie’s never been one to turn away that kind of help. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Did you three come together?”

“Yes, Sebastian and Aveline walked me here. Lowtown is...not very safe right now.”

“It’s _never_ safe, Daisy.”

“Well! It’s very not-safe right now. More than its usual never-safe.”

“She’s lucky her home wasn’t looted, or worse. I heard of how many elves turned on their own people alongside the qunari.”

Contemplative, heavy silence.

“Varric, Aveline...Fenris. You all were there, weren’t you. At the Viscount’s, I mean.”

“You know I was, Merrill.”

“Glad you weren’t.”

“I know. I mean, I know you’re glad I wasn’t there. I only meant...Well, it was obviously as bad as they say. But was it also...how did she do it?”

“Merrill, why don’t you ask her yourself later?”

“She’ll just scowl at me.”

“And I’m a better storyteller, anyw—”

More piercing screams.

“...Creators.”

“Fenris, would you like to pray with me?”

“I do not _need_ —”

“I would appreciate the company. I ask no more than that.”

A long wail punctuated by painful hiccups.

“This is no...place for praying.”

“Then let us go to the library. Come.”

Sobs ebbing, but not quite.

“Oh, I can’t stand it. I can’t stay here, either.”

“I should go back to the Keep, then. Outside, my guards—”

“I’ll leave a note for Anders about it so I can walk Daisy back.”

“Thank you, Varric. _Dareth shiral_ , Tetheron.”

Single-file footsteps down the stairs and out the door.

Two deep voices.

“ _Though all before me is shadow,_

_Yet shall the Maker be my guide._

_I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond._

_For there is no darkness in the Maker’s Light,_

_And nothing He has wrought shall be lost._ ”

The hum of healing magic and the slow, low sound of a sleeping spell.

“ _I am not alone. Even_

_As I stumble on the path_

_With my eyes closed, yet I see_

_The Light is here._ ”

Dog nails scratching at the bedroom door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Possess**


	9. Possess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete| **Possess** |Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up: mildly sexy. emphasis on mild, but not everyone's me--someone who happily reads smut on public transport, least of all _mildly_ sexy

Rory would never forget the look in his eyes when he figured it out, later than she had. She would never forget it because his sister had the exact same eyes—shape, color, lashes, brows—only hers looked ashamed and guilty and for a moment, just one moment, Fenris had looked _hopeful_. But Rory had known, because only a family member could _look like that_ and had tried to warn him by reaching for his shoulder, but Fenris was Leto for an instant and he didn’t even flinch.

He didn’t even flinch when Danarius came strolling down the tavern stairs, drunks fleeing for the door with each step. He just looked…

Not like Varania.

Not even like Fenris. The Fenris she knew.

“And this is your new mistress, is she? The Champion of Kirkwall?” Nondescript features, well-trimmed gray beard, carefully pressed exotic robes...Danarius looked like any pampered noble but with more hunger in his eyes than most.

Rory unsheathed her daggers while Fenris remembered he had a sword and righteous fury. She bared her teeth at him the way creatures of the Fade smiled. “Fenris doesn’t belong to anyone. And he’s going to _enjoy_ killing you.”

And, later, for a moment, he did. His hand glowing blue inside a dead man’s chest, lifeblood dripping red down his arm, his frenetic energy dropped alongside Danarius’s corpse. Varania, to everyone’s surprise, he had growled at to run and never come back, and she hadn’t questioned her good fortune and complied.

“We are done here,” Fenris said to her, and she, Aveline, and Sebastian didn’t dare argue.

They all gave his mansion a wide berth after that. Isabela, the only one who’d managed to stake the place out without guilt (and cared enough to do so), said there were no new shattered wine bottles in the garden, and that was enough of a surprise in itself to give Rory pause.

It was only when Merrill remarked she’d seen him sitting on one of the smaller docks, dangling his bare feet and spitting apple seeds at fish that they all breathed a sigh of relief and ventured visits to his corner of Hightown again.

Rory kicked dirt off her boots in the entryway one afternoon and set to unlacing them. Fenris was such a stickler for little house rules like that. When confronted, he’d do a terrible job lying, no, it didn’t bother him...but if she _didn’t_ confront him, she would’ve noticed his eyes dropping to her muddy soles every few moments, brows pulling together and mouth pursed.

There were some habits, Rory knew, that Fenris might never be able to break. Speaking his mind about his inconsequential opinions and preferences might always be one of them. She would and could respect that.

But it was a shame, because she’d forgotten he’d invited her today, and while these boots worked beautifully with her newest breeches, they were blighted near impossible to put on and off quickly.

By the time Rory’s feet were acceptably bare and ready to meet the sunwarmed stone of the rest of Fenris’s home, Varric and Aveline had already wrapped up whatever business they had and were putting on their own shoes.

“Freedom must be a terrible burden for the man,” Varric snorted, hopping up and down on one boot.

“What did he do now?”

Aveline snorted, too, but it sounded more like her husband’s exasperated sound than Varric’s. “He needs to get a _house_ , Hawke. A real one. He can’t keep...squatting in such a conspicuous location. He’s a conspicuous _person_.”

“If you can,” Varric said with another eyeroll, “try and talk some sense into his broody skull.”

Out into the sun they went while Rory made her way to see just how broody his skull really was.

“I heard you’re moping,” she announced. Fenris, lounging by the fire, didn’t acknowledge her entrance except for the flicker of a smirk. “You’d think you’d have tired yourself out by now.”

“I have excellent stamina, it would appear.”

Rory liked to think herself well past the point of blushing these days. Three or four years or whatever had helped her rebuild a tolerance.

It was simply because of the way the dying embers lit up the curves of his smile when he said it. Not _how_ or _what_ he said.

“I’m not moping, however.” He gestured for her to take her usual chair across from him, although she had already walked over to it without invitation. “I just...thought freedom would feel different.”

The back of her borrowed chair brushed Rory’s short red plait, and she tried not to stiffen. “What, you thought life would magically be easy now?”

Fenris frowned at her. _Phrasing, probably_. “I...no. No, I…” He shifted in his own chair and sighed. “I don’t know...how to move forward. It’s difficult to overlook what magic has done to...me, my family, and I can’t envision…” He sighed again. One of those rare moments when he was lost for words. Rory would excuse it. “If I seem bitter, it’s not without cause.”

Rory didn’t even try to quiet the astounded laugh that burst from her throat. “Bitter? Really?” Fortunately, Fenris snickered. At least he had the grace to look humbled.

She leaned forward and fixed him with a glare. A friendly glare. The friendliest of glares. “You do know overwhelming pain and its memories doesn’t just go away when you slap a poultice on it. ‘I can’t believe you thought that was a good idea, Hawke,’” she mimicked his voice from that terribly memorable day over Hadriana’s cooling corpse. “What makes you think an even _bigger_ poultice would be different? You just poured dwarven moonshine you’d been brewing for years on a wound the size of the Arishok’s left cleaver, and you think it’s going to feel better right away? I can tell you from personal experience it does not, and at the very least, it’s never going to look the same. Healing as a _process_ isn’t only for ‘other people.’”

Fenris didn’t look cowed throughout her entire monologue. But he also didn’t frown. “I can’t even imagine where this...future path could lead.” He considered her expression thoughtfully. “Do you?”

 _Stupid dying embers._ “Well, you know I hate leading us anywhere, but you did promise me once I’d always have you—around,” she clarified. The last word Rory wanted to use was about someone _possessing_ him.

Fenris, surprisingly, offered her a sharp, amused grin that quickly faded as he faced the fire again. _Not brooding at all_. “We have never discussed what happened between us. Three years ago, that is.”

“Oh! Who even keeps track anymore,” Rory laughed on impulse. Fenris faced her with something similar to panic, but whatever he saw in her own hysterical expression eased the tension in his eyes. _Well, that made one of them_. “You didn’t want to talk about it,” Rory said more evenly, leaning even more forward, unaware how her arms were now almost clutching her chest.

“I thought it better you hated me. I deserved it,” Fenris admitted, but before Rory could laugh at him in disbelief yet again, he added, “But I was a fool. It wasn’t—wouldn’t be better. That night,” the way he got to his feet so suddenly made her even more aware of her own height, “I remember your touch as if it were yesterday.”

 _Oh, fuck_.

A place where his shoulder met his neck, but closer to his chest than she would have thought, made him shudder when her teeth bit down.

The skin behind his knee was sensitive, but in a way that made him gasp a laugh and swat her wrist away, pushing the offending hand into her pillow until he could force her lips to swallow his giggles.

He really, really, really, _really_ liked his hair pulled in seemingly all contexts or positions, like when he’d finally flipped her on her stomach, pressing down, and she’d groped blindly for his neck and succeeded only in yanking the longer locks by his ears, and he’d hissed a curse and his hips _jerked_ and—

 _Well, if those were only the touches_ she _remembered off the top of her head…_

Rory inclined her head a fraction, listening. Fenris’s words slowed even further down, apology raw in his voice. “I should have begged your forgiveness long ago. I hope you can forgive me now.”

“Is this happening?” Rory blurted out. Fenris looked just as taken aback as she felt. She hastened to sound intentional, not…

_A person who regularly suffers from personal fantasy hallucinations?_

No.

 _Insecure_.

“Would you...is this going to be the same as before?” Rory tried to frown assertively, but all her brows could do was pinch together. “Are you apologizing for making a mess of things, or are you apologizing for making a mess of things and promising never to do it again?”

He walked closer, cautiously. Rory hadn’t thought there was so much distance between their chairs before this moment. She could feel her breaths coming faster. “If I could go back to that moment, I would stay. I would tell you how I feel.” He hesitated, but Rory didn’t have the dignity for herself or for him to push. But when he said them, he spoke easier than she’d feared. “Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you.”

“Oh.” Another laugh threatened to spill out of her, because apparently Rory Hawke, in the face of—some sort of emotion— _laughed_. “Well, it’s fortunate _you_ got to be the one to embarrass yourself and say it, because if I’d been the one to go first, I’d never be able to look at you ever again.”

“Hawke…”

“Get _fucked_ , Fenris,” Rory did scowl now, “I forgave you long before you forgave yourself.” She tried to get to her feet to prove her earnestness, but he had her pinned to the chair before she could do more than twitch.

“If there is a future to be had,” he said against the narrow shell of her ear, and his voice rumbled into some deep part of herself she’d forgotten had existed, “I will walk into it gladly by your side.”

They were such different people now than they had been three years ago. Three years ago, for all he’d declared himself free, Fenris felt himself still a slave. Rory had felt imprisoned by a house weighed down by generations of guilt and obligations no matter how much coin she’d thrown at it to say otherwise. Three years ago, they had been too afraid to come together face to face, his mouth on her back and her teeth in her pillow.

They both had ugly scars then. Jagged lines, shallow cuts. And now they had those same scars, but more. The slice on his thigh from the crazed elven woman’s sword before they took it from her corpse, poison sinking deep into the wound long enough that the cut had healed red forever. The thick raised wound on her torso that had barely missed everything vital.

Three years after, right now, their touches were hesitant, clunky, unpracticed. Rory jerked away on instinct when his fingers caught on her hair at the unfortunate angle that the Arishok’s gauntlet had. Fenris let her take her time tracing the markings, very gently in case they decided to pain him inconveniently. He put a quick stop to _that_ activity when he saw her evil little smile and caught her finger before she jabbed it into his navel in immature delight. Rory asked a lot more questions than she thought was usually sexy with a partner, which frustrated her less because of him and more because of _wow, am I really that bad at this that I have to_ ask _if I’m doing this right, which apparently I am not?_

But Fenris still _really_ liked it each time she almost pulled a fistful of hair out of his scalp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Wilderness**


	10. Wilderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess| **Wilderness** |Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hello! We're almost done! Don't worry (because I know you were worrying), stay tuned for more Rory Freakin' Hawke in the future. Thank you for continuing to read!

Varric grunted when the cantrip came free of his leg with a bright glow. Anders wiggled his fingers above it, and the bloody metal did a little dance in the air. “All better, Serah Tethras!” Anders pretended to make it squeak. Varric shuddered.

“Changed my mind, Blondie. Think I’ll just bleed out and die instead.”

“After I wasted lyrium on you? I don’t think so, Varric. You will live and die by my hand.” Anders rolled up his sleeves, grabbed another vial, and pulled the cork out with his teeth. Varric took the hint and lay back, rolling his eyes at Rory so dramatically that she knew it was meant for Anders to see.

Anders’ surviving victims—meaning Fenris and Rory, as the dead victims were blood mages and their slaver friends and thus no healing had been attempted—sat huddled at the edge of the camp. The soothing green of Anders’ healing magic warmed her in the chill of nighttime by the Wounded Coast, but it also lit up their hiding spot. Rory found herself looking over her shoulder with every rustle of leaves.

“What happened to the good old days of fixing injuries with a generous splash of booze?” Varric complained. Rory smirked and reached into her bandolier in silence.

“They died alongside everyone else.”

Fenris laughed, but he tried to turn it into a disinterested cough when an incredulous Anders shot his head up to stare, in case his archrival had actually found him _funny_. Fenris’s scowl didn’t come quick enough. Rory slipped a small bottle of whiskey from her pocket, silently toasted the keen-eyed but glaring Varric, and took a sip.

“Blondie, I bet the ladies and gents begging you for _house calls_ don’t know how unsexy shit like this is.”

“You’re right. It’s much sexier when my patient stays still, shuts up, and doesn’t ridicule my work.”

 _Now_ nothing could silence Fenris’s shout of laughter. It positively echoed while Rory choked, whiskey dripping down her chin and onto her tunic. Anders, the oblivious thing, had only registered that Fenris was laughing for some reason and continued crouching over Varric’s mangled leg in concentration. It was probably only due to Varric’s particularly fondness to that leg which kept him from joining in the teasing. His face was admittedly a bit purple from trying to keep his grin contained, however.

“I have—stupid whiskey on my shirt,” Rory wheezed, getting to her feet. Fenris, now cackling less at Anders and more at Rory’s inability to be a functioning adult, didn’t help her calm down. “I need to change, it’s so gross, I didn’t bring a spare—”

“It’s an ugly shirt,” Fenris informed her, innocent acquiescence not very convincing given his laugh and taunting, quirked eyebrow. “It’s a sign from the Maker to leave it here—”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you—”

“I would.”

Varric, the only one able to see Anders’s brow furrowing less in concentration now and more in irritation, considered interjecting. Rory was leaning over a very-pleased-looking Fenris, hands on her hips, glare on her face. But then his leg healed up properly, and Varric’s priorities changed to cringing at the accompanying unpleasant sound of skin sewing itself up.

Anders scrubbed his face tiredly. “Can I have some of that whiskey, please?” he asked from behind his hands. “I’m useless for a night watch and I want to enjoy my evening before you two crawl off to fuck on the beach.”

They both stiffened, but at least Rory had the grace to turn pink. Not that anyone would notice in the dark. “Here,” she muttered, handing it over. Anders took a dramatic swig and collapsed on his bedroll. It was far too smooth a swoon to have _not_ been aided by magic.

_Asshole totally wasn’t as drained as he claimed._

“Elf, as good as a quick beach-fuck must sound to you right now,” Varric suggested from his own bedroll, “as your friend, I’m asking you to keep it tucked in ‘til morning when Blondie and I can fend for ourselves. Then you both can turn the sand to glass for all I care.”

“No one _said_ we were going to—” Rory’s outrage was quickly cut off by Fenris’s surprisingly sincere apology. Varric nodded in approval and lay back.

 _Had he been_ planning _on a beach-fuck until that moment?_

Well, now she wanted to be on watch even less.

Fenris was already armed and up, so she shot a withering look at Anders’s reposing form that she hoped he could feel in the Fade, and strapped on the leather breastplate over her whiskey-stained tunic.

Nighttime on the Wounded Coast could be full of peaceful, soothing sounds. Gentle waves against boulders crashed just under the sound of the wind. Rory’s ears pricked every time a bird called or a tree rustled, but her daggers remained blessedly sheathed as she patrolled her half of the camp perimeter.

Honestly, little jobs like these were a relief. It wasn’t just the—and Rory and friends were reasonably arrogant enough at this point to say so—relative ease of the contracts. Who didn’t love killing slavers? Better yet, who didn’t love getting _paid_ to kill slavers, _and_ rifling through their corpses’ pockets? It was even sweeter when they got to free their victims and return stolen objects. Isabela could taunt Rory for her acts of charity all she liked, especially since no one had accused Rory of selflessness before she’d met the pirate. Even Isabela felt vindicated in killing them.

No, the real unfortunate pleasure came in getting out of the city. Rory didn’t need to be reminded every miserable day of the tensions between Circles and templars, but no one had cared about Rory’s “needs” in the past, and Kirkwall wasn’t going to be the first to do so. It felt like she had a new letter on her desk every time she went home, sometimes several a day.

She didn’t like Meredith. She didn’t like Orsino. She would’ve disliked Elthina, too, if the woman hadn’t been mildly more reasonable than the pair combined, and if she wasn’t so important to Sebastian. She didn’t always see eye to eye with the prince, but that didn’t mean she was going to spit on the people he cared about.

And every day, there was some sort of mage problem, some sort of templar problem, to attend to, and every single person in charge of the city seemed to need Rory Hawke to address each one personally.

You’re a prominent citizen, Hawke. You’re the Champion, Hawke. People value your opinion, Hawke.

But a prominent citizen couldn’t tell the people that the Champion wanted them to get bent, now, could she? It wasn’t as though the folk in Lowtown cared one way or another, and they undoubtedly would be the ones to get wrapped up in it first. Rory didn’t even know how many families had gone hungry thanks to her and her friends, whether their breadwinners were scum or not.

They killed a lot of people, Rory recognized, gloomy in the gloomy coastal darkness.

These morbid thoughts occupying her attention almost obscured the sound of Fenris’s sword sliding out of its sheath. But because she wasn’t a completely incompetent Champion, she did hear it, and was able to draw her own daggers quick enough and duck.

“ _Vishante kaffar_!” Fenris’s roar drew what must have been more assailants towards him, their boots crunching shrubbery _too close_. But Rory’s malicious personal attendant wasn’t so easily distracted. The woman slashed out again, poison glittering on her blades even in the dim light of their campfire.

Rory parried, wishing she’d thought to coat some deathroot extract on her own. Before the bandit or whatever had time to respond, she kicked the woman in the stomach. Her opponent went down with an “oof.” Rory smashed into her, a heavy pommel-strike to the jaw, and hurried to help Fenris, making sure to push down on the woman’s throat as she went.

Varric and Anders had managed to stir by now. They still seemed a little too bleary-eyed to trust themselves with actual combat, but were both being helpful by tossing smoke vials and magical barriers at regular intervals.

Four remained. Two bodies lay at Fenris’s feet. With a pang of guilt, Rory realized she’d left Fenris to fend for himself against six foes while she had to handle only one. Three left, once she joined him. She stuck a knife in the closest’s back—a gentleman who hadn’t sensed her creep up behind him. Two. Fenris gutted the big bloke—oh, a Tal-Vashoth—leaving the last for her to zip around, blades flashing, and dispose of her.

“Well,” Varric sighed, rubbing his eyes, “I can’t say we get to sleep, but we do get results, don’t we?”

“I’d really rather a different campsite,” Rory complained, toeing the nearest bandit. Definitely bandits, if they’d had a straggler Tal-Vashoth amongst their fighting numbers.

“I don’t think it wise to stumble around in this darkness.” Fenris shook his head, as if expecting Rory to disagree with him. Which she _wouldn’t’ve_. Because she was just _complaining_. She didn’t _actually_ think it wise.

She kept her whining to herself.

They let Anders and Varric, with their spells and flasks, handle cleanup of the bodies. Fenris and Rory handled cleanup of their own personal bodies. Handy thing, being near a beach. Plenty of water, if not potable.

After sliding down the dune and reaching the shoreline, she set her daggers aside but within reach and unbuckled her armor with a tiny sigh. Her tunic was damp with sweat and the occasional splatter of blood, but the real irritation lay in the whiskey smell. It was flammable, if nothing else. She shucked the tunic off, too, if nothing else than to dunk it in the sea a couple times. She knelt on the pebbles and wrung it a couple times until it smelled saltier rather than alcoholic. Careful but pleasantly cool hands pressed against her stomach, and just in case she deemed him a threat, Fenris scraped a lingering bite under her ear. She relaxed, and he pulled her into his lap.

“Didn’t mean to leave you alone back there,” she sort of apologized. He hmmed against the nape of her neck, carefully avoiding a certain part of her hair. “I’m glad you didn’t get overrun. I’m really glad.”

“Not enough confidence in me, Hawke?” His tongue laved a path down the little nubs of spine just above her shoulderblades. Rory shivered, heat of his touch contrasting with the chill of the breeze.

“That’s not what—”

“I know. I didn’t know if you had heard them approach. I wanted to get them away from you in case you had not.” His hands slipped from her stomach to her thighs. Rory’s heart raced, and she was glad for his descent, because it was embarrassing enough when he could _feel_ the beat of her heart. Fucker didn’t need to know just how bad she wanted him at every single stupid touch.

“Is that why you did your little battle cry? Not just to annoy our sweetly slumbering friends? Also, why are you getting handsy _now_?” Fenris withdrew his hands from where they were steadily creeping between her legs and carefully carded fingers through her hair instead, giving his mouth easier access to her neck. “Mm, you sound really delightful in Tevene, by the way. You could be saying anything and it’d get me hot.”

A huff of laughter by her ear. Rory’s skin prickled. “I’m not saying anything particularly enticing, I assure you.”

“I bet you swear worse than me.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “But you’ll never know.”

Fenris bit down now, his hands returning to their happy position between her legs, and Rory forgot for a pleasant little while that there were burning corpses and irritated friends on nighttime watch in the wilderness above them.

Rory didn’t think Fenris would have put it in so many words, the idea of “protecting” her, but the feeling of someone looking out for her and her wellbeing wasn’t as patronizing as she’d always assumed. Perhaps it was because she respected him so much. Admired him. Liked him a lot, very strongly, very carefully, very intensely, very devotedly. All these words and more, except one. He thought— _knew_ —she was capable. But he wanted to ease the burden, just a little, if he could.

Rory washed her face later, trying to look a little less well-fucked because, technically, she _wasn’t_ , when she felt Fenris’s hands wrapped around her side once more, a damp chin resting on her shoulder.

She was about to sneer at him something to the effect of “Again?” but he put a fast kiss above her ear and purred, “‘I’ll shit on your tongue.’”

A startled laugh burst out of her. “The fuck?”

He pulled back, a grin slashed on his face when she got to her feet. “It’s what I said. To draw them away.”

“That’s disgusting. I wouldn’t follow you if you said that.” Fenris only laughed, so she began heading up the dune back to camp with her arms full of leather. “Even with _my_ cursing, you wouldn’t follow _me_ if I did.”

“Hm,” Fenris pretended to consider, letting his gaze drift down once he was sure she was still looking. “Of that I am unsure. I enjoy following you.”

“Stupid,” Rory snorted, but she lost her footing and practically fell into camp.

“You’ll draw more bandits our way with all that noise. We could hear you coming,” Anders glared, and for a moment, Rory misinterpreted and sputtered. Fenris nudged her as he passed, cuing her to shut up and get a hint. She did. Varric, on the other side of camp, was spared from the uncomfortable scene.

Anders, unfortunately, picked up on his unintentional euphemism for the first time that evening. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath, certainly deep enough that it was for her benefit, not his. “It’s like killing people alongside teenagers,” he muttered.

Rory scowled. “ _Vishante kaffar_.” Fenris coughed into his fist, failing to stifle laughter that was undoubtedly mocking. “You too!”

“Oh, wonderful.” She could _hear_ Anders’s eyes rolling in their skull. “Now there are two of you.”

And even though it was a mild insult, that one sentence felt good.

Two of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Smoke**


	11. Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness| **Smoke** |Accidental|Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind those archive warnings!

“What did you do?” Rory had never heard her own voice like this before. An inhuman shriek, rising in pitch and volume and panic. “What did you do?” Anders sat in silence before her, hands clasped together in what could have been a prayer if she didn’t know better.

“It was the only way, Hawke.”

“You idiot.” Rory kicked the box he sat on hard enough it splintered beneath him. She nearly kicked him, too, where he lay splayed on the wood. “There were ways. There were ways other than this. You think this will help? Your mages will be slaughtered. Everyone else will be made Tranquil. I thought you were smarter than this. I thought there was something left of you that wasn’t _stupid_.”

Aveline, behind her, was barking orders at the remaining guards, but Rory had no clue what everyone else was doing. She didn’t know who was here. How many of her friends? How many of her enemies?

“You’ve killed people, too, Hawke. In the name of righteousness.”

His placid expression fueled the rage boiling in her stomach. “Don’t talk to me that way.” Her scream echoed, fury behind the sound, not pain like the others. “Don’t look at me like that. Anders!” His eyes were blank. They weren’t even glowing. What even remained of him? Of her friend?

Was that _pity_ in his stare?

Probably everyone had seen her punch coming. Anders probably had, too. He spat out a mouthful of blood as casually as if it had been a pear seed. Rory’s trembling shoulders still managed to wrench away from Sebastian’s careful hand.

“We need to help, Hawke.”

“I’m not fucking helping him!”

“I meant the city. The innocents who will suffer.” It wasn’t as if Rory had expected any less anger in Sebastian’s voice. But she hadn’t expected it to be so quiet.

“You’ll suffer.” Rory stared at Anders’s peaceful expression, trying to emulate Sebastian’s aura of cool judgment. “Icy” didn’t look good on her, she knew. “You will suffer what every single person in Kirkwall will feel combined.”

Anders finally stood, arms held wide. “Then kill me. It might as well be you. I’ve done my part.” His words were garbled by the mouthful of blood.

“I won’t make you a martyr,” Rory bared her teeth, but Fenris spoke behind her, as casual as she’d ever heard him.

“He wants to die. Let him.”

Anders smirked, sensing her weakness. He moved closer, arms still outstretched, and Rory fought not to step back. He reached for her belt, and before anyone could draw arms, he drew out her belt knife and handed it to her by the hilt. “Come on, Hawke. There’s nothing else to be done.”

“I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she snarled.

“Hawke!” Aveline snapped, her retinue of guards clanking away. Rory heard her own friends shifting, preparing to follow. “The Gallows! Now!”

Anders’s humorless smirk grew into a full-on sneer. She knew it was false. She knew he was goading her. She _knew_. But…”You already have to clean up my mess. You’re already just as responsible as me.”

“I did _nothing_ —”

“So you’ll continue doing nothing? You’ll do nothing at all? You’ll let your people _suffer_? You’ll let everyone die to make a point?” She could see his hand trembling on the hilt. But why? Why, when he didn’t fear death? “It’s not like you cared enough to put a stop to this earlier. Always neutral, always staying out of it, and look where it got you. Everyone relied on you, and you _failed_.”

_She knew this was on purpose, she knew he didn’t mean it, a challenge before a revolutionary_

“Come on, Rory.” Anders offered the hilt to her again, ripping open the front of his robes. His bare chest gleamed, two lockets against his sternum. A Grey Warden token of some sort, a Tevinter Circle amulet. “Make them proud. Come on, darling.”

 _It was only the Fade, only Vengeance, it wasn’t Anders, it wasn’t her friend, he wouldn’t_ know _how those words felt_

It made killing him all right, didn’t it?

It wasn’t really him, right?

Anders’s muscle and fat and heart felt like everyone else’s on the other end of her knife.

And Rory, for the first time in a long while, didn’t wish her sister was with her.

She wasn’t sure who helped her stagger away from her friend’s corpse, or who helped her into the boat with Aveline’s retinue. Probably Fenris. It was always Fenris. A constant.

Except that he didn’t run away. Except that he helped the Circle. Except that he promised to try, at least.

Rory, although she tried not to let it be known, was scared of dying. They—Aveline, Isabela, Merrill, Varric, Sebastian, Bethany, Fenris—holed up in the Circle, preparing to fight, unsure when the templars would storm in, didn’t know. Well, she didn’t think they knew, anyway. That for every blood mage who made Varric scream, every corpse that grinned with rotting teeth and no eyes but precise aim, that every carta assassin descending with shining daggers out of nowhere made Rory’s stomach twist with fear. And it was fine when they were all dead—or deader, in the corpses’ case—because Rory could laugh as usual, could wipe off her blades on cooling and useless armor and rifle through pockets.

Everyone knew Rory was afraid of spiders and didn’t want to die _that_ way. And sure, that seemed a particularly awful and terrifying way to go, strung up and immobile, too many eyes glittering while fangs, gleaming with venom, lovingly sank into her throat—

 _Nope_. New thoughts. Brave thoughts.

Rory wouldn’t let these templars kill her today any more than she’d let imaginary spiders.

“Promise me you won’t die?” Fenris approached her while she was checking and rechecking her vials of explosives. Rory would have given him a wobbly but feral smile if he’d been looking at her instead of her ear, away from her eyes. She watched him swallow, then he reached for her cheek. She let herself be drawn in, his forehead bumping against hers, his black lashes brushing her red brows. “I can’t bear the thought of living without you.”

And maybe there was someone just as scared of _her_ death as she was.

“I’ll punch the Maker in the balls if He tries to touch you,” she said, too afraid to promise, more afraid of life without—

Fenris’s fingernails scratched her scalp through her ear. “Nothing is going to keep me from you,” he swore, intensity and _fear_ and severity and _truth_ in that one sentence. Their kiss was violent and desperate, armor stabbing in uncomfortable places, and that made it more real and more honest.

The doors burst open, crazed, fanatical, _idiot_ templars prepared to kill and prepared to die rushing inside.

Kirkwall had never run so red. Blood and lyrium and smoke mixed in new ways, red and redder.

Orsino and Meredith’s muscle and fat and cursed magic felt like everyone else’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Accidental**


	12. Accidental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke| **Accidental** |Taste|Offense|Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting at last chapter, when I'd originally been writing all this Rory tomfoolery, I'd had a lot of trouble with the rest of this fic! And even though this one was tricky, too, I want u all 2 know that the rest of the chapters starting now were still really fun to write and I hope they're fun to read.
> 
> Probably says something about me, if you've seen the tags. moving on!!! we leave DA2verse hereon out, jsyk!

Rory, nearly clutching the ship railing post-vomit, didn’t have the energy to smack Isabela when she snickered, “I bet you weren’t this much fun on the way from Denerim.”

Rory sank to the creaking deck and wiped a sweaty hand through her sweaty hair. Even scowling was too hard. “I wasn’t. But I also wasn’t hauling ass from a city smoking with magefire.”

“You poor darling,” Isabela agreed sweetly, hands on her hips above her. “I bet you didn’t have a baby to puke up, either.”

Well, now breathing was hard, too.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Isabela glared. “You _knew_. And your ever-devoted murder-boyfriend _still_ doesn’t.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Rory tried to snap, but her exhausted throat didn’t comply. “Killing Meredith was easier than rescheduling a Rite of Annulment for another seven months or whatever.”

Isabela just stared. Rory took the opportunity to wipe her face and look a little more dignified. “‘Or whatever?’” she repeated, aghast. “You don’t even _know_?”

“Leave me alone, Isabela. Go away.”

“You’re on _my_ ship, so that’s exactly what I’m _not_ doing, because sometimes _I’m_ not as self-absorbed as you say. But you? You didn’t tell anyone, and you still haven’t, and you kept going around, stabbing and punching—”

Rory pushed herself to shaking feet with effort. Isabela was taller than her, more so than other women even, but she’d fight every darkspawn in the Black City before she’d let _Isabela_ criticize _her_ ethics from literal higher ground. “And the _fuck_ else was I supposed to do, huh? Let my home blow up sooner than it was going to anyway?” she hissed, dropping her voice. Isabela noticed the way Rory had glanced around the ship for eavesdroppers, if the way her eyes narrowed any further. At least they were lucky; Isabela’s crew were well-used to the Champion and the Captain’s spats by now. “I don’t even know why it bothers _you_ of all people a girl got knocked up and doesn’t know when.”

Being pregnant did not protect Rory’s cheek from Isabela’s hand, unfortunately, and Rory trembled too hard to stop her. Eyes alight with fury, Isabela whispered, “You think no one had a life before they met you, don’t you?” before walking away, and the condescending gentleness in her voice stung more than the slap.

They avoided each other the remaining two days to Cumberland, much to absolutely everyone’s relief. As far as Rory knew, none of the crew had bothered to find out the reason for the slap, and if they had, none of them had told Fenris.

All Fenris knew, he told her with open glee, was that he’d learned the crew’s latest bawdy tune during the night he’d spent with them in the fo’c’s’le. And it featured the many creative ways _the Captain refused to take Hawke’s orders, but took her instead in her private quarters_ —

Fenris blocked every single one of Rory’s tantrum fists, laughing each time while he recited another verse about Isabela _bending her words to twist her meaning, bending her waist to keep her keening_. It wasn’t until he realized Rory’s punches were more bitter and anxious than teasing that he let her go and shut up. But she didn’t explain, not even when they went ashore and Fenris had to nudge her to make her express reasonable gratitude to Captain Isabela for the safe passage.

“Thank you, blessed Andraste,” Rory sighed, planting each bootstep firmly on the path out of the docks. Fenris followed in silence behind her, hood pulled up. “Thank you for at least one good place in this nightmarish year.”

“I do not think it wise to lodge in the city, Hawke,” Fenris said. “Word will have reached the Circle here, and they hold great influence.”

“And where else do you propose we stay?” Rory challenged, shame manifesting as irritation. She pulled up her own hood as they pushed further into the city.

A giggling child zipped after a dainty, fluffy pup, both of whom managed to vanish through the gaps in the crowd. Rory stared after them. Hopefully Orana didn’t forget everything Rory had told her and started buying fancy Orlesian chew toys. Tetheron, sturdy old boy, was a simple dog with simple joys and never saw a branch he didn’t want thrown.

“A farmhouse on the outskirts,” Fenris suggested, annoyance coloring his own tone. “Serving a city so large, there are doubtless some who would lend us use of their stable for a single night.”

“Well, if Isabela’s boat wasn’t comfortable for me or our baby, a haystack will be less.”

“Don’t call me that,” Fenris snarled as they left the gates. Cumberland proper gleamed on the path ahead. “ _I_ was not one to complain, given our remaining options of escape.”

Rory’s back was stiffening, and not from aching muscles. Was she supposed to repeat the exciting news, since Fenris had clearly misunderstood? Or should she pretend to have been distracted, never to bring it up again until she asked him to tie the umbilical cord? _“Well, you see, I sort of thought I’d already told you, and…_ ”

And now Fenris had stopped walking.

Rory could see his face under the hood, and wished the canvas did a better job of hiding it. Grumbling dockworkers shoved around him, and the only reason Rory was sure they didn’t knock him over was because Fenris’s face, body, and expression were still as stone.

“Hawke.”

There were as many wrong answers to this single word as there were hairs in Varric’s chest. Rory would have to select one of them carefully.

“I’m having our baby.”

They did go to an inn after all.

Each of them had two unspoken jobs: Rory’s was to find and bribe the most susceptible-looking guard for entry to the city alongside their weapons, no questions asked. Fenris’s was to select the inn. Both of these tasks were agreed in utter silence, even when Rory saw a tempting and classy-looking establishment advertising goblets engraved with ice runes.

No, it was a merchant’s inn, respectable, warm, and clean. It even had a proper-sounding name: The Enchanter’s Decanter. It was no Hanged Man, but that was probably why Fenris had chosen it. Only she noticed the slight tremors in his hand when he paid the innkeep enough coin for the most private room.

Once inside it, Rory’s guilt oscillated between panic and anger. She unclasped her traveling cloak and began unrolling their packs while Fenris checked the hall and then the room for escape routes. When he closed the door, the raucous noise of cheerful taverngoers was snuffed in tense silence.

Fenris leaned against the wall across from her, arms crossed over the cloak he still hadn’t removed. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he looked almost through her.

Rory would have been a lot less forgiving of his refusal to break the silence if it didn’t stem from his shock, not anger. She plopped on the bed and busied herself with greasing and sharpening their smaller knives while she waited. Her own tension was a taut cord making her sit up too straight. Countless imaginary arguments played out in her head. What he would say. How she would respond. Another one.

By the time Fenris’s shuddering sigh broke through the latest hypothetical accusation’s sting, Rory was plenty riled up. She heard movement and readied him with a glare, defensive responses poised, but no, it was only Fenris sinking down the wall to sit, hands resting on his knees, staring through the window at the winking afternoon sky.

“Where are we to go?”

All the fight in her misted away at the sheer terror in his voice. Her hand faltered on the whetstone. “You were the one who said we wind up in strange places. I expect we’ll go somewhere stranger.”

“Hawke, we will not be able to stay anywhere long—”

“So we won’t.”

Fenris’s fingers were tensing on his knees, she could see that even under his gauntlets, “—this news of Kirkwall will spread like fire on brush, we will be known far wider than we should ever—”

“I’m not letting your panic bother me,” Rory snapped, more to remind herself than him. Fenris wrenched his blank eyes from the window and back to her, inhaling sharply. Rory looked down at her palm, where the knife had sliced a clean red line. The whetstone slipped out of her grasp.

He was by her side with no gauntlets and a clean cloth in an instant. “Hawke. Let me.”

Rory thought about how embarrassingly immature a time it would be to point out how miniscule a cut on her pricked and callused skin was in priority, and wordlessly extended her hand to him. Fenris sat down and wrapped it, neatly and efficiently.

His hair fell forward around his face while he did his work, and Rory stared where the silky locks gathered around the nape of his neck. He’d let it grow longer the last two years, and while it never had reached the length that Rory had regretted while fighting the Arishok, it did brush below his jaw, just above his throat.

“We could go to Weisshaupt,” Fenris suggested quietly. “Stay somewhere nearby, out of sight until Bethany, perhaps…” He didn’t finish the thought, but he did finish tying the bandage.

Rory nudged his shoulder until he lifted his arm and let her lean against him. “That’s a good idea. Bethany will know what to do.”

“Has she…” Fenris trailed off. Neither of them had said any specific words since the path from the docks. But she shrugged, unwilling to say those words: “labor,” “birth,” “baby,” “delivery,” or anything truly definite.

“I’m sure she has. By now. Maybe. She’s a big girl now. Always been a good healer.”

“Then we have a destination.”

And they did, it seemed. They held each other a long time that night. And their silence when they departed in the morning was much more comfortable.

But Rory was Rory, and Fenris was Fenris, and the calm didn’t last so much longer. The roads hadn’t grown any safer since Kirkwall, perhaps even less so given how many people were fleeing some calamity or another. Refugees and dramatic nobles alike drew highwaymen. And it wasn’t as if Rory could kick back and relax every time some foolish thug tried to rob them while Fenris did the heavy lifting. She had to fight, too, and for the first time in her life, wished she had been a mage like Bethany. Having protective runes in place without much direct combat sounded very nice as their journey to Montfort continued—Val Royeaux, city of culture, sadly became less of an option as mages across the world rebelled. Every fight they found themselves cleaning up filled the both of them with more fear with each exertion.

“We’re really living in the lap of luxury,” Rory told Fenris one evening, curled up in the dried-up husk of an abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere. Their meandering was now straddling the border between Nevarra and Orlais to places even Fenris hadn’t been.

Neither of them spoke Orlesian. Stables were much more accommodating than the average snooty inn, and less likely to trick them out of their coin.

Fenris snorted, thinking her joking, but Rory shook her head. “I’m serious. Think of the big groups we had to drag along just to make it to, say, Sundermount. And we’d have to set up roaring, obvious campsites in caves or open plains with nary a rotting barn to protect us from the wind.”

Fenris said nothing save “You’ll bring a curse upon us,” putting aside his belt and daggers within easy reach, and settled beside her. They’d surrounded the place with traps, as usual, enough to wake them, but Fenris always slept lightly, anyway. She was glad they’d spent the money on the fire-runed quilt. It made the need for a beacon like a campfire less necessary, and now that they’d finally made it past Montfort, even the nights were growing warmer.

He was quiet long enough Rory thought him asleep. She hoped he was, at any rate. She pressed a hand against her stomach, where a noticeable bump had announced its presence. The baby kicked its approval with a tiny but solid foot. “We’re going to love this kid so hard.”

Lyrium lines glimmered in the half-light, and he put his hand over hers. “But loving it will be easy.”

And Rory didn’t cry.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure which of them had managed to batter down the gates of Weisshaupt Fortress. Was it her, with her distinctive facial tattoos and the newer one on her bicep, pregnancy so obvious that it almost could excuse her rage? Was it Fenris, with his equally recognizable markings and enormous Blade of Mercy, arm around her shoulder like he could release her wildness at a moment’s notice?

It was probably Bethany and Stroud who’d convinced the Warden Commander to let the Champion and her ‘friend’ inside their walls. But it didn’t matter in the end, because they had their own quarters and their own rations. And when Rory realized what was happening to her body and, well, emerging child only a handful of weeks later, she had her own sister by her side.

“Rory, you’re almost there,” Bethany told her, as if Rory needed the encouragement after a hellish half-day. Rory laughed as much as she could given how disgusting and drained she felt, covering her eyes with her hands.

“Shut up, sister! Just shut up!” Bethany laughed, too, sounding more exhausted than Rory. “You have no right to be tired!” Maker, but she didn’t even have the energy to _sound_ angry. Her own vocal chords had betrayed her.

Fenris, much less deliriously amused than the two of them and rather pale, kept gripping her hand too tightly. Rory no longer noticed _that_ little pain, if ever she had. He must have seen people giving birth before. Maybe it was different if it was someone you—knew. If it was your baby with that someone.

“Well, we always knew the pain of your courses would come in useful someday. You said it feels similar, right?” Bethany’s false cheer wasn’t exactly contagious. It made Rory angry all over again, helped her give that one final effort, and—

“I have a nephew,” Bethany said, finally sounding worn out. “Fenris, please, if you don’t mind helping me for a moment—”

Rory kept her trembling hands on her face, as if that would help calm her breathing, or increase her relief, or make the soft wailing any clearer. The bed, her prison for so many hours, dipped next to her.

“I’m going to finish cleaning,” Bethany’s voice, thick with emotion, sounded very far away when Rory opened her eyes, “and then I’ll leave you three alone.”

Three.

A blanket was what she noticed first. A soft little gray thing filched from the wardrobe, gently supported by a familiar lyrium-marked arm. And now that arm was coming closer, small blanket bundle with it. Fenris lay beside her, the gray bundle between them, and their son’s little brown eyes blinked up at them.

He had the daintiest little black eyebrows Rory had ever seen. She smoothed a shaking finger over one of them, trailing it down a soft and unreasonably chubby cheek. A strong—but equally chubby—fist latched onto the offending finger.

He had a weird elven nose. Weird little tapered ears, even pointier than hers but less so than his father’s. One of the tips even flopped over a little. Eyes like burnt sugar and the blackest of brows. The prettiest thing she’d ever seen in her life.

“Our baby,” Rory whispered.

“Our baby.” Fenris’s voice was hardly louder.

Rory took their son in her arms, head bent over him, Fenris’s over hers. Her tears fell on the baby’s brow when she kissed him, and Fenris’s mouth pressed a single long kiss on her hair, now damp with his own tears.

Rory supposed, then, that neither of them had technically seen each other cry. But now seemed a good time as any to change that. So she brought their son up, his neck supported by her hand, so that Fenris could look at the two of them together. Blinking tired, confused brown eyes, their son began to mewl. And the three of them cried together as a family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: **Taste**


	13. Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental| **Taste** |Offense|Different

Letters from Varric could be fun. Not always, but they could be.

Rory had written to him when she and Fenris’s son had been born. She’d tried to explain to him that the child didn’t exactly have a name yet. She and Fenris, haunted by their own names—Coralie, Fenris, Hawke, Leto—had been reluctant to force a name of their choosing on their baby. They had agreed with each other that it made sense to let him choose his own when he was old enough to understand and think about it, come to a decision. But in the meanwhile…

Rory called him Baby, because he was a baby and they loved him. Fenris called him Amatulus, because they loved him and he was small. And Varric…

It was Rory’s fault, really.

_Varric-_

_Thanks for the update. Glad the city’s falling around your ears only a little these past few months. Orana said Tetheron has a bit of arthritis in his back legs. Can you tell her to speak to Elegant about it? She’ll have something._

_I’m writing from a village outside Perendale. We’re going to be here for some time. I’m getting a little slower now. Things have been hard enough getting from Kirkwall to Nevarra, of all places. There are refugees and apostates and so on near the roads, which means bandits. We can’t stay in too many cities, even smallish ones, because we’re “too recognizable” or whatever. And here’s the kicker: I’m extra slow, because I’m maybe six months along. Yeah, Fenris and I are having a baby. Oops, I suppose._

_We’re going to Weisshaupt. Bethany better help the Wardens see reason, Maker preserve me, and let us in. I'm siccing Aveline on her otherwise._

_Baby’s such an annoying kicker, by the way. I’m only writing to you because its stupid little feet won’t let me sleep._

_Rory_ _Hawke._

And Varric, in his ever-annoying, ever-charming way of bestowing monikers upon anyone and everyone, letters these days always ended with:

_Things are still a shithole here. Hope you, Fenris, and Kicker are doing fine._

Maker forbid she use the same word _twice_ in a long letter, both those times being in regard to a _person_. He’d probably already told everyone he knew that the baby was _named_ Kicker, as if she and Fenris had voluntarily named their kid that.

And when they arrived at Skyhold, because of _course_ Corypheus couldn’t stay dead and of _course_ Malcolm Hawke couldn’t metaphorically stay dead and of _course_ Varric needed them...of _course_ “Kicker” was a name that had already stuck.

Rory didn’t let Cullen anywhere near Baby. Rory wished they could avoid the “Commander” completely, but sometimes Inquisitor Lavellan would drag her along to their war table and help them figure out some Free Marches issue or another. It was even worse when they were going to do some random operation in a region or town she and Fenris were well-acquainted with. Rory would look at the map and remember the kind merchant wives with a hidden apostate teenage daughter in Redcliffe who’d taken in their little family of three. And Cullen would make some mage reference and Rory wasn’t even allowed to scowl at him very long.

Fenris didn’t let Amatulus near the magister—or “Altus Dorian Pavus,” which was apparently _very_ different from a magister or whatever, who actually cared?—which was made even more difficult by the fact he was Inquisitor Lavellan’s lover. This avoidance meant Inquisitor Lavellan thought they had two children, because he’d hear Fenris mention “Amatulus” in conversation without their son present, and later have Rory ask if “Cassandra is still playing with Baby.”

It took Varric to bring them all together, bouncing the boy on his knee during a game of Wicked Grace that Rory and Fenris reluctantly agreed to join. He was Baby and Amatulus and Kicker, the last of which Kicker’s parents accepted because it showed just how good Varric’s taste was in values: he _hadn’t_ told anyone at Skyhold they had a child, after all. Because he trusted the two of them, and their privacy, and the safety of their son.

The similarity of Rory’s “Killer” nickname, however, meant she was once more demoted to “Hawke.” But Rory secretly didn’t mind. The people of Thedas didn’t need one more town crier denouncing her.

Kicker helped, too, in his small (very, very, baby-sized small) way. The Winter Palace would have been even less sufferable without him there. He looked very fine in his silk brocade baby gown. Rory would even venture he looked finer than his da—though, she had assured Fenris, their baby’s father had _tried_ to look presentable in his green silk. He’d even reshorn the sides of his hair for the occasion. But Kicker outshone them all.

“ _Regardez la Championne_ _et son serviteur_ — _quelle impolitesse_! _Halamshiral a besoin de sourires, pas de larmes, n’est-ce pas_?”

Rory, ignorant of all things Orlesian except the word “Champion,” including formal ball etiquette, threw a desperate glance over her shoulder at Varric. He only shrugged, toasted her with something that looked a lot stronger than the fancy bubbly alcohol available, and threw it back. Fenris clutched Kicker close, unconsciously rubbing the whimpering baby’s back to soothe him, and threw glares at all the masked gossips whispering behind their fans.

“ _Mais quelles larmes mignonnes_! _Son fils est assez beau malgré la lignée de son père_.”

One of the gossips took a delicately slippered foot in their direction, blocking Rory’s view of the delectable pastry table. Fenris held Kicker closer, and Rory went to join him. She leaned in close to his ear, made much more accessible by the haircut. “I think the Orlesian nobility are about to declare war on us and us alone.”

Fenris scoffed, audible even over the annoying wheezing of the string quartet on the dance floor. “Let them try.”

“ _Madame la Championne_ ,” a heavily-accented lady’s voice purred behind her. Rory tensed and wished she had more visible and intimidating daggers. She turned slowly, weighed down by her gaudy ruby-laden gown, and grimaced a smile at the masked noble. The woman, ignoring Fenris with the malice-free prejudice of a wealthy human, had her arms raised ever-so-slightly. Rory moved a little closer, blocking the woman’s view of their baby. “I had not known you would bring your son to _cette petite mascarade_.”

Fenris kicked her ankle even before Rory could snap something tart back. _Varric had nicknamed the wrong guy_. The noble’s face was hidden behind her mask, but Rory knew without a doubt she was frowning at Fenris’s disrespectful visage, even if she hadn’t seen the kick. “Nowhere safer for a child than the Game,” she said instead, narrowing her eyes. But the noble nodded once, like Rory had said something clever.

“Nor more educational.” She dropped her voice, and it was only then that Rory realized the woman had not been part of the whispering group. That didn’t mean they weren’t watching. Or listening. “There are more rules to this evening’s Game than your Inquisition knows. Some players are not even part of the same Game.”

Subtlety was not Rory’s strong point. Maybe pretending it was—and leaving the verbal sparring to the better liar in their trio—would be safer. “Fenris,” she said to him, holding her arm out, “our baby, please.” Rory could just _sense_ the noble’s nose wrinkling under the mask, as if Kicker had soiled himself rather than Fenris daring to look her in the eyes as an equal. Kicker, ceasing his sniffles, babbled before latching onto her bare shoulder with his mouth like the squishiest toothless lamprey.

“You remember my good friend Fenris, of course,” Rory managed to say, stumbling over the endearment. What else was she supposed to say?

_Lover? Father of my child? Partner? Partner in what? Killing people?_

None that she felt comfortable with, let alone what Fenris might feel comfortable with.

Whichever, Rory was _dying_ to see the woman’s expression under the mask.

Fenris gave her a curt nod, which the noble barely managed to return. “I’m sure you’ve read Serah Tethras’s work, well-read as Orlesians are.” He jerked his chin Varric’s way. The man was, fortunately, chatting with the spymaster so casually that Rory hoped they were swapping intelligence. The woman made a vague sound of assent. “Then you’ll remember how many games we’ve played, how many rules we’ve _heeded_ , and how many we have won.”

Fenris could speak for himself. Varric had reminded her only yesterday she still owed him coin.

“ _Madame et...monsieur_ ,” the noble managed, “all I advise you is to observe the boards from above. You cannot play two Games at once. But you may always become pawns of many. _Profitez-bien de la soirée_.” She offered a little curtsy and melted back into the crowd of socializers. The circle of gossips had long moved on.

“Thoughts?” Fenris murmured.

Rory used Kicker’s head as a convenient mask to cover the movement of her lips. “I think she might have been giving us some helpful advice, but I have no idea what it could mean.”

Kicker flung his chubby arm at his father’s face with a happy burble, and Fenris caught it with reflexes born of practice. Kicker latched onto the proffered finger immediately and tugged it towards his mouth. “I believe it is a good thing the Nightingale and Varric were behind us,” Fenris replied. Rory smoothed Kicker’s black hair, thick for a baby, back behind the floppier of his pointy ears. Distracted by the sensation, Kicker released Fenris’s finger before he could reduce it to a placebo nipple. “I’m sure they overheard.”

The mentioned parties materialized behind them. The Nightingale pressed a quick kiss against Kicker’s head after a permissive nod from Rory, and Varric lifted him right out of her grasp to give him an enthusiastic snuggle. “Go enjoy the evening,” the spymaster suggested. “You’ve hardly danced at all. Inquisitor Lavellan is already scandalizing the ballroom with Dorian on his arm; you should join them.”

Sure enough, the Tevinter magister—or whatever—and his buff Inquisitive lover were half under judgmental gazes, and half away from pointed glances looking elsewhere as they waltzed. Sister Nightingale had Rory’s arm looped under one elbow and Fenris’s under the other, but Rory’s own eyes couldn’t help wandering to the banquet table practically sagging under the weight of pretty little pastries.

“Oh, let them eat cake, Nightingale.” Kicker had nestled himself into the space between the sash of Varric’s Inquisition uniform and his chest, which of course he’d managed to leave a little bare. “There’s enough scandal in this court to last a lifetime. It probably already has.”

“Then what’s one more?”

The sweetness in her voice was hard to resist, if nothing else than for its undercurrent of threat. The Inquisition probably wanted her presence known, but her interference minimal. Well, if they were to see and be seen, Rory supposed it was a good opportunity to do so. As they descended the elegant stairs to join the dance, she assumed Fenris was much better on her feet than she was.

And he was. She’d assumed correctly. So correctly that later, she meant to apologize to Ambassador Montilyet for the _well-loved_  state of their borrowed finery. Fortunately, since cleaning bloodstains out of Inquisition formal attire took precedence over rendering indecent wardrobes decent once more, the frazzled ambassador never asked for them back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hubris knows no bounds so I refused to use Google Translate. I therefore expect you to correct my French if I've truly done it a disservice, please & thank  
>  
> 
> Next time: **Offense**


	14. Offense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste| **Offense** |Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more to go, but if you needed more Rory Hawkeverse in your life (which we all do, lbr), fear not and glue yourself to the "refresh" button (or whatever your internet browser has) on my works page!

“You swore to me, Hawke. You swore to me back in the Gallows—”

“Well, you weren’t there to remind me, weren’t you?” Rory sniped back, realizing her slip-up the moment the words left her mouth.

“No,” Fenris spat, “I wasn’t. I was here, in Skyhold, with our child, with our _family_ , waiting for you, knowing I could do nothing.”

Rory curled in on herself, covering her face with her hands. Hiding. Defenseless.

She heard Fenris slump onto the armchair across from her, ceasing his frantic pacing. “Pretending you have no responsibilities does not make them go away. And I am...I am not…”

_A responsibility._

“You’re not.” Her hands muffled her voice. “You’re not a responsibility.” The creak of the nearby bassinet was the only sound between them. She expected Fenris to go on, to throw insults and reminders and shame the way she threw knives, and they would all be deserved. But he didn’t. She felt waves of fury roll off him even as she hid.

“I’m not a hero.” He couldn’t see her open her mouth in protest, but he must have sensed it, because he spoke fast. “Thedas would forget me, would you let them. And being forgotten by the world means nothing to me, unless...unless you are not part of that world.”

When Rory inhaled, it sounded like a sob. She pried her hands away and forced herself to look Fenris in the eye, and nearly faltered when she saw the way his green was shining with unshed tears despite the glare and clenched fists on the armrests.

“I would have gone into the Fade to rip you from it,” he said, like a condemnation. “Alone. You swore to me, Hawke. I told you I can’t...I can’t…”

_Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you_.

The bassinet creaked again, a tiny sleepy snuffle came from within, and the first angry droplet trickled down Fenris’s jaw. Rory placed her shaky hand on the cradle. It stopped creaking. “You are my world,” she told it, and she hated that her voice was just as shaky as her hand, hated that this was something she had to remind herself, their baby, _Fenris_. “You are my world.”

Fenris’s shoulders were shaking, too, so she didn’t look. “It said you were going to die,” Rory said instead. “We’re all going to die. I know. But I was so afraid when it said that, because I” _love you_ “never want you to leave me alone, either. And I wanted to” _love you fearlessly_ “have that choice of never being alone. And I” _was selfish_ , “was selfish, and foolish, and I understand” _what Bethany and every other mage you fear has the power to fall prey to_ “that I wasn’t thinking, that I let the demon get to me. And I swear to you” _and our family_ “I will never be that weak again.”

“I have heard those words before.” There was something dark in Fenris’s voice now. Dark, old, hurt, _angry_ , because after all he’d known of demons and their temptations, after all he’d known of his own, he’d never expected _her, of all people—_

And the contempt in his voice sliced her like any knife.

Rory swallowed around her rough throat. “I’m so scared of dying, Fenris.” Stony silence answered her. “I would have fought ten of those demons to come home to you. A hundred. I would butcher anything and anyone that tried to keep me from you.”

She did look now. The armrests threatened to splinter in the manacles of Fenris’s white-knuckled grip.

Her voice broke like shattering ice on the ocean. “ _Nothing_ was going to keep me from you.”

_Promise me you won’t die? I can’t bear the thought of living without you_.

The baby grumbled little waking cries, and Rory reached into the bassinet to grasp his tiny, plump hand. If her fingers trembled, their son didn’t notice, and tried to pull them into his mouth anyway. She plucked him from his blanket and struggled with the laces of her tunic, holding him close like an extension of her heart.

A shadow fell over the two of them. _Fenris_. Rory tried not to sob as Fenris tilted her chin up, thumb over the tattoo, like always, other hand in her hair, avoiding one spot by her neck, like always. And the kiss he pressed on her lips was so gentle, so restrained, his escaped tears damp on her cheekbones, that Rory could feel the pulse of love and fury behind it. Their baby latched onto her, and Fenris placed a hand on the top of his fuzzy head and a hand on Rory’s and knocked his forehead against hers.

“We shall not let anything have the chance to try.”

Less of a promise, less of a threat, more of a plea with that undercurrent of rage and fear.

This wasn’t the time for Rory to speak, so for once, she didn’t. She held her family close, meaningless words pushed from her mind, and refused to think of Stroud, the man who had saved her sister from death, fighting a demon eternally in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next (and last!) time: **Different**


	15. Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always|Hands|Maniacal|Lying|Faithful|Education|Grieving|Compete|Possess|Wilderness|Smoke|Accidental|Taste|Offense| **Different**

Varric had been the one to find the little shack in some random farming village in some equally random part of Nevarra. “It’s a real fixer-upper,” he’d grinned, “but you two are pretty used to fixing up shitty places by now.”

“That depends,” Fenris had deadpanned. “How many of its walls are made of red lyrium?” Varric’s laugh had come easily, but too hollow, and for all that Rory thought Fenris’s comment was kind of funny, it also hit a little too close to home.

 _Home_ , though. Now _that_ was a strange word.

It made sense, because people had to settle down somewhere. Even the Dalish, nomadic lifestyles that they led, set up camps and routines and communities. And if even the darkspawn had a place to call home, well, Rory wasn’t going to let the darkspawn one-up her, now, was she?

Still. Life had to go on. Inquisitor Lavellan had relinquished control of much of the real Inquisition’s remains, and while Solas or Fen’Harel or whatever had vanished with threats of some nefarious plan as of yet to unfold, Rory and Fenris and Kicker and the soon-to-be new baby needed a place to be. After Weisshaupt, they’d traveled around with Bethany long enough, hopping from Kirkwall with Viscount Varric and Aveline to Starkhaven with King Sebastian Vael, even sailing with Isabela for a brief time. But Rory, leaving her sister with _Admiral Isabela_ , had had enough years of Bethany’s scolding and mothering— _ha!—_ about having another baby, at her age, despite her elf blood, without some notion of stability, think of the state of the world these past four years…

Let it not be said that Varric Tethras’s contacts were useless.

“Well,” Rory said, Kicker toddling along beside her yet evading her attempts to pick wildflower petals from his long black hair braid, “Varric never was a liar.”

“You may wish to write to Seeker Pentaghast and inform her,” Fenris replied. He sounded much more cheerful than Rory felt at the sight of the tiny little house that could just barely be deemed a “farmhouse” squatting on the flat field ahead. They marched on.

“It has a garden,” Fenris pointed once inside the dilapidated gate. Rory stared helplessly at the weed-eaten little plot. Then, a few minutes later, “And a cellar, too. Spacious.”

Rory looked at the cruel and sunny spring sky, pleading for patience, with an expression that she hoped didn’t look too much like her mother’s. “Baby,” she told her son, “please go tell Fenri—Father that it’s rude to be so excited before the mother of his unborn child has eaten.”

“Fenrither!” Kicker screamed in delight. “Ma says—”

“I heard her, _amatulus_.”

Kicker ran off to join him anyway, chattering away, while Rory toed the garden. They’d tried very hard to give Fenris a proper fatherly name, but while Fenris was pretty good at remembering to call her “Mama,” and Rory was equally good at referring to herself as “Ma,” she’d never really managed to call Fenris “Father” while Kicker was present. Instead, she caught herself mid-sentence, meaning Kicker had been forced to figure out Fenris’s name on his own.

It was different every time. Rory prayed, for her own sake rather than Fenris’s, that it would wind up being something relatively normal.

With another resigned sigh, she joined the two of them inside the shack. To her surprise, Varric had had the foresight—and thoughtfulness, really—to provide some modest furnishings for the place. Inexpensive but not cheap, perfect for replacing—or leaving behind in a hurry, she couldn’t help but think. An armor and weapon rack. A bed in each of the two rooms, and a cradle. A cast-iron cooking pot. Even a small box of toys, because Varric was the type to spoil kids rotten, and really, she and Fenris should have guessed.

Inside a locked chest, there were also quite a few copies of _Hard in Hightown_ with a written promise to send along the latest installments of _Swords and Shields_ as they came out.

_Thanks, Varric._

Rory had never used the word “giddy” to describe the glowing-broody-murder-elf intertwined with her life, but if ever there was a time to do so, it was while he inspected the splintered rafters, and the creaky walls, and the cellar seal, and the hidden backdoor, and the hearth. It was, frankly, exhausting to watch. Rory went back to the garden to avoid his and Kicker’s merry bouncing about.

It really wasn’t in as bad a shape as she’d feared. Finer form than the house, at least. The plots had managed to stay in a recognizable pattern that might, with some weeding, be called “orderly.” Rory observed the hills in the not-so-distant distance, where the rest of the village and its bustling nightlife—as Varric unhelpfully described it—lay. A general store or friendly neighbor would have seeds to trade. The main issue was _what_ to trade. She wasn’t sure which trinkets and gear they’d brought would be acceptable, and failing that, Rory wasn’t exactly known for being _friendly_.

But seeds would be had, somehow. And as a foolish rabbit hopped too close to the house, others visible in the field, Rory’s salivating mouth practically demanded fresh vegetables and hearty stew, so help her.

“Well,” she announced to herself and her unborn kid, “this is something different.”

“What’s on your mind, Hawke?” Fenris asked from within the doorway. She could hear Kicker making little zooming noises, presumably due to his adventures with the stone dragonling toy. Hopefully its scales didn’t cut him.

“Rabbit stew.”

He huffed a laugh. “I fail to see how that is different.”

Rory scowled, tempted to uproot a weed and throw it at him. _Set an example for the children, Rory_. “This,” she said, waving her arms at the general environment. Fenris leaned against the doorway, a few wisps of white hair escaping his leather hair tie. When she didn’t elaborate, he cast his gaze about the bright, open grass.

“That it is.”

“A far cry from squatting in mansions, huh?”

Now it was his turn to glare, and the little twinge in Rory’s heart stopped her from laughing at her own snide remark.

_What do you do when you stop running?_

“These are dangerous times, Hawke. There will always be dangerous times, yes, but for now…” Kicker’s squeaky roars echoed from inside the old house, and his parents stopped, listening to them.

“Yaa! Hallo, dragon! A shame you are going to die, no? Come and face me! Yaa, clang-clang! Whoosh!”

“For now,” Fenris continued, “we may protect and defend what is ours in a place which is ours.”

“Feather, come look! Feather, our enemies are vanquished.” Fenris peeled himself off the doorframe with such languid, ogle-worthy grace that Rory probably did deserve his responding leer.

“‘Feather’ is going to stick,” she sneered, and his leer grew into a smirk. But he didn’t say anything, just disappeared inside the shack to go play with their son. “Domesticity is disgusting,” she muttered, and while she knew it couldn’t last forever, that more and more, stranger and stranger awfulness was happening all around them, for now…

For now, she would learn to tend a garden. Vegetables for rabbit stew and fruit for preserves. Peaceful times were different.

And maybe, growing alongside them, some deathroot. Because Rory Hawke wasn’t stupid enough to think “different” meant “forever.”

* * *

**the end.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with Rory, folks, and probably enjoying the ride! If you were interested, there are some longish oneshots, mostly completed, that I'll be throwing into the mix as part of a series at some point. Three are kid!fic, so if that's one of those genres that bores you, that's your warning. The next one, however, is an Isabela POV in this canon. I know she didn't get much screentime this fic, but that gets remedied.
> 
> Drop me a line and tell me your thoughts on the journey!
> 
> Next time, next story: **A Lesson to Future Generations**


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